A Georgia police sergeant who admitted on body-camera footage that he punched and tasered a Black man during an arrest was shot and killed by the same man five days later, according to investigators.
Sgt. Chris Fisher, 36, joined the troubled Warm Springs Police Department in May 2026 and earned a promotion to sergeant in July. Six officers staffed the small West Georgia department when Fisher died on Sept. 1.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Jimmy Lee Steverson, 23, pulled a black Chevrolet Silverado alongside Fisher’s marked patrol vehicle in the parking lot of the Meriwether Country Inn shortly before midnight and fired multiple shots into the car.
The GBI said Fisher died at the scene after the shooting.
The shooting came five days after Fisher arrested Steverson at a Marathon gas station in Warm Springs after telling him he smelled marijuana coming from his truck, local media reported.
Steverson denied having marijuana and questioned Fisher about whether the officer recognized him or was targeting him. Fisher told Steverson that he intended to search him and the truck.
The interaction turned physical after Fisher told Steverson to turn around so he could detain him.
The released footage does not provide an uninterrupted view of the physical confrontation. Fisher’s body camera stops for about 20 seconds during the struggle before it resumes with Steverson on the ground and a Taser prong near his ear. Warm Springs police said something either struck Fisher’s camera hard or knocked it off his vest during the encounter.
But after other officers arrived, Fisher acknowledged that he had used physical force against Steverson.
“He’s got a Taser in his ear, a Taser prong in his ear,” Fisher told fellow officers. “And I punched him in the face a couple times.”
Fisher told officers that Steverson resisted him and swung at him after Fisher attempted to take him to the ground. Fisher said he slipped while trying to detain Steverson, described Steverson as being on top of him, and said he punched Steverson before deploying the Taser.
“On my life, I didn’t swing … I swung on you?” Steverson said after Fisher told him he had started swinging.
Fisher replied: “You did, and then you swung after I swung.”
Police later said they recovered marijuana and firearms from Steverson’s truck. According to court records reported by local news outlets, authorities charged him with possession or distribution of marijuana, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and willful obstruction of a law-enforcement officer,
Meriwether County officials released Steverson from jail on Aug. 28 after he posted a combined $10,000 bond and spent roughly 12 to 14 hours in custody, according to local reporting and booking information.
On Sept. 1, Fisher was on duty and seated in his patrol car in the parking lot of the Meriwether Country Inn after an unrelated traffic stop, the GBI said.
At about 11:57 p.m., Steverson pulled the Silverado alongside Fisher’s vehicle and fired multiple shots into the patrol car, according to the GBI’s preliminary account. Fisher died at the scene.
The next day, Anderson County, South Carolina, deputies stopped a vehicle on Interstate 85 in which Steverson was a passenger. Authorities found him with what the GBI described as an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. Paramedics took him to a hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.
The GBI has said its investigation remains active. It publicly identified Steverson as the shooter but has not announced any additional suspects or released a final motive finding
The body-camera gap is not the only limitation in the publicly available recordings.
Before Warm Springs police released Fisher’s body-camera footage, Steverson’s family provided 11Alive with a cellphone recording of part of the Marathon gas station’s surveillance video. The footage did not show the entire encounter and included a roughly two-minute break between clips.
The family recorded the video from a surveillance monitor instead of releasing the original file. It did not show why Fisher first approached Steverson’s truck, the complete exchange before the struggle, or a clear view of every moment of the physical confrontation.
When 11Alive reporter Chase Houle requested the complete gas-station surveillance footage, an employee said the station had already erased it, according to the station’s report. The account does not establish why the station lacked the footage or whether the business deleted it as part of its normal retention practices.
Fisher’s killing occurred while the Warm Springs Police Department was still rebuilding from a sweeping 2024 department-wide investigation.
In June 2024, Warm Springs fired then-Chief Emilio Quintana and suspended 11 officers after the city cited “recent events and emerging concerns” about the department’s conduct and operations. City officials sought investigations from the GBI and the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, or POST, according to local media reports.
At the time, Aisha Al-Khalifa was left as the department’s only active officer and was promoted to interim chief. In May 2026, the GBI arrested Al-Khalifa and charged her with false statements and violation of oath of office. Investigators alleged she knowingly made false statements during the state’s investigation into the police department.
The city’s police directory lists Matthew Mayfield as interim chief effective March 4, 2026.
The GBI has not publicly connected the 2024 misconduct investigation, Quintana’s firing, the officer suspensions, or Al-Khalifa’s criminal case to Fisher’s killing. The events are connected by the department’s continuing leadership and staffing turmoil, but the available public record does not establish that the earlier scandal caused or contributed to the shooting.
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