Man uses gun to stop fleeing Car-Jacker

Kimberly D. Boyd took her son to preschool Monday morning, then dropped by a bank before heading to her office in north Cobb County.

Minutes later, her routine was shattered, and sometime before 9:30 a.m. she was struggling for her life with a carjacker as her Toyota Sequoia raced south on U.S. 41. The kidnapping ended with the 30-year-old Acworth woman dead and the carjacker fatally shot by a passer-by.

Boyd died instantly when her SUV was broadsided by a cement truck, police said. Within seconds, the man driving Boyd's car was also dead — shot by Shawn Roberts, 31, who had seen Boyd fighting the man and followed the car, police said.

"She was fighting for her life," Roberts, who lives in Acworth, told WAGA-TV.

Roberts told police he was driving north on U.S. 41 about 9:30 a.m. when he saw a man beating a woman outside the SUV, just south of the Lake Allatoona bridge. He stopped and turned around on the four-lane road to help the woman, said Cobb Police Cpl. Dana Pierce.

The carjacker pushed the woman back into the SUV and took off, with the doors still open. Roberts followed about two miles to Lake Acworth Drive, where the crash occurred, Pierce said.

As Boyd's car turned east on Lake Acworth Drive it was struck by the cement truck.

Witness Bobby Williams said the truck had just started away from a traffic light and was traveling no more than 10 mph when it hit the SUV.

Williams, owner of A2Z Auto Service at 4356 North Cobb Parkway, said he saw Roberts get out of his 2004 black Dodge Ram pickup and run toward the accident scene wearing a leather shoulder holster.

"He looked official," Williams said, explaining that he thought Roberts might be a plain-clothes police officer. "He hollered at [the carjacker], 'Stay where you are. Stay where you are.'"

The carjacker ran toward a Raceway gas station on the corner and Roberts chased him. He told police the man turned a gun toward him, and he had to do something.

"I shot and killed a man today," Roberts told WAGA-TV. "I don't feel good about it, but if I hadn't have done something somebody else would have died."

Williams said he heard at least four, perhaps five, gunshots.

"He [the carjacker] was five feet in front of me when he got hit," Williams said. "On TV, all that flailing around that goes on is not what happened. He dropped like a sack of potatoes."

Monday night Cobb police identified the dead man as Brian Clark, 25, who has family in Acworth. Police did not say whether Clark lived in the area.

No charges were filed against the cement truck driver, who was not identified.

Police questioned Roberts, who they said was not an off-duty officer, before releasing him without filing charges.

I want to thank David Moody for telling me about this piece.