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Report Says Sammie Davis Had 2010 Run-in with Cops at Kroger

NewsCentral Producer

A Macon Police Department incident report obtained Monday shows that Sammie Davis Jr. had a 2010 run-in with police and store employees in the same parking lot where he was shot to death by a police officer on Dec. 21.

The report also says Davis’s relatives told police that he was schizophrenic. It lists the type of incident as "demented person."

The incident report, obtained by WGXA reporter Chace Ambrose, shows that Macon officer Billy S. Skinner responded to a call of a disturbance in the parking lot at the Kroger on 400 Pio Nono Ave., a little after 4 p.m. on July 7, 2010.

Skinner wrote in the report that when he arrived at the store, he saw several store employees, including two managers, holding a black male and attempting to restrain him. The man’s family later came to the scene and identified the man as Sammie Davis Jr.

Skinner said Davis was lying on the ground when he identified himself as a police officer and told Davis to put his hands behind his back. After he cuffed Davis, Skinner wrote that he helped him sit upright so he could breathe easier.

According to the report, the store manager told Skinner he had been contacted by several customers about Davis “acting strange” in the parking lot. The report says that when employees approached him, Davis “became belligerent,” and that employees decided to restrain him to protect the safety of customers in the area.

Skinner notes that EMS personnel arrived about the same time as members of Davis’s family.

“At this time, we found out that Davis was not taking his medications for schizophrenia and this is how he acts sometimes,” Skinner wrote.

Davis was transferred to the Medical Center for observation, according to the report.

Macon Police refused to be interviewed about the report on Monday, claiming the 2010 incident was "an open case." Nothing in the incident report indicates any further action was needed by the police officers or that the case had been assigned to investigators.

Davis was shot and killed by Macon officer Clayton Sutton in the Kroger parking lot in the middle of the afternoon on Dec. 21.

Inconsistencies in information released by the police department resulted in public scrutiny of the shooting and protests in front of city hall and in the mayor’s office. The police department’s own investigation into the incident was passed on to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation by Bibb County prosecutor David Cooke Jr. The GBI has yet to complete its report.

The case has also drawn the attention of the NAACP, which is conducting its own investigation into the shooting. Numerous parties, including Mayor Robert Reichert and Gwenette Westbrooks, president of the NAACP Macon Branch, have called for patience and calm while the investigation continues.

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