‘I need answers.’ Mother of man killed in struggle with Crawford deputy speaks out

Clutching a color program for her son’s funeral, Elaine Gibson stood before news reporters and cameras in a meeting room at the Crawford County Courthouse on Tuesday and asked for answers that have yet to come.

Moments earlier, law enforcement officials had told Gibson and more than a dozen other locals who’d gathered that an investigation into the Jan. 9 shooting death of Denrick Demond Stallings by a Crawford sheriff’s deputy would, as the GBI agent overseeing the probe put it, be “independent and thorough.”

But few if any new details from the deadly encounter were divulged.

The 15-minute briefing seemed to leave Gibson and other relatives of the 47-year-old Stallings, a former Marine, shaking their heads.

“I am mad right now, I’m really mad,” Gibson said. “I mean, they didn’t have to kill him like that. That little officer didn’t have to shoot him down like an animal. I mean, he is somebody. He was somebody. And for them to do him that way, this just don’t make sense to me. I mean, I need answers and I need answers now.”

The fatal shooting happened shortly after noon on Jan. 9, not quite a mile north of downtown Roberta.

The GBI has said in a statement that Stallings was shot after a Crawford sheriff’s deputy — later identified as William Owenby — tried to pull Stallings over for speeding. Stallings was Black, Owenby is white.

Stallings, according to the GBI statement, “refused to stop” and led the deputy on a chase that “lasted several miles until Stallings crashed.”

The statement went on to say that a foot chase ensued and “the deputy deployed his Taser, hitting Stallings and causing him to fall to the ground. As the deputy attempted to arrest Stallings, a fight started and there was a struggle for the deputy’s gun. During the struggle, the deputy fired his gun and hit Stallings. Stallings died at the scene.”

Owenby, as is routine in such matters, is now on administrative leave. This is the second time in two years that Owenby has shot and killed someone following a car chase. Then Bibb County DA David Cooke cleared Owenby in the 2020 shooting following a review of a GBI investigation.

The spot where Stallings was shot lies just west of Crawford County Middle School at the intersection of U.S. 341 and a dirt lane known as Miller Drive. The area sits about 17 miles due west of Interstate 75 and south Macon.

‘A lot of questions’

Macon Judicial Circuit District Attorney Anita Reynolds Howard spoke first at Tuesday’s gathering and offered condolences to Stallings’ family. She said she was on the scene the day of the incident and had been kept updated ever since.

Howard said she knows “this family and this community has a lot of questions. And I want you to know that I have questions as well.”

But, she said, many of those questions will have to go unanswered for now.

“We have to get the evidence,” she said, “so we can get those questions answered.”

Howard added: “We will not do anything that will jeopardize justice in this case or any other case, and we have to follow the evidence.”

Jerry Jones, special agent in charge of the GBI’s Perry office, which is leading the investigation, said the probe was “going well.” He explained that it is common for the GBI to be called in to investigate shootings involving police officers.

“We will be thorough to ensure that we have got an accurate account of what happened that day,” Jones said. “Our goal is to leave no stone unturned.”

He said interviews have been conducted and lab analysis of potential evidence will be examined to find out if it is “matching up to what we are being told.”

Jones said the probe may take “several weeks.”

He asked members of Stallings’ family “to trust the process” and said investigators would update the family as best they can as the investigations unfolds.

“There’s just some things that we can’t disclose,” Jones said. “And it’s not to hide anything, but it’s about the integrity of the investigation.”

As Jones stepped away from a podium, Stallings’ mother raised a question.

“Well,” Elaine Gibson asked, “can you tell me how many times my son was shot? ... Because I don’t know anything.”

Jones said he would speak with her privately after the meeting and share what he could.

Body cam footage?

Gibson then addressed the assembled news reporters, describing her late son as “the sweetest child that I ever seen before in my life.”

She went on to say, “I want justice for this, I mean, they won’t give me answers about what happened to him. All I know is he’s dead, and I want something to be done about it.”

A man sitting beside her who identified himself only as Stallings’ father questioned why authorities were mum on the possible existence of the deputy’s body-cam footage, and how, if such footage exists, it should be made public.

“It’s like they hiding something to me,” the man said. “If they got body camera (video) let everybody see it. What’s wrong with that? You want to get the truth out. But for some reason (they) don’t want to show that.”

He deemed Tuesday’s meeting at the courthouse “a waste of time. ... We wanted answers.”