A Georgia State Patrol trooper unnecessarily used “deadly force” to stop an SUV speeding along Interstate 20 in Atlanta, ejecting and killing two young men inside, the family of one of the victims alleges in a lawsuit.
Amarion Clotter, 18, and Broderick Dunn, 22, died near the Hill Street entrance to I-20 around 1 a.m. on Sept. 30, 2022 when the Jeep Grand Cherokee they were in was deliberately hit by the patrol vehicle of trooper Scott Tarpley.
A Georgia Department of Public Safety incident report states that Tarpley used the “Precision Immobilization Technique,” known as a PIT maneuver, to stop the Jeep after it had clocked speeds in excess of 100 mph. Other pursuit-ending techniques were considered but deemed too dangerous due to the Jeep driver’s behavior, the report says.
Credit: Courtesy Shakenna Clotter
Credit: Courtesy Shakenna Clotter
Clotter’s mother, Shakenna Clotter, and the mother of his 2-year-old son, Shavonie Heflin, claim Tarpley’s use of the PIT maneuver was unwarranted, in part because traffic was light as Dunn drove the Jeep at approximately 95 mph. In a lawsuit filed Aug. 30 against Tarpley and the Georgia Department of Public Safety, the two women said Amarion Clotter’s death was “unimaginably terrifying and horrific.”
“And it happened for no good reason,” the complaint, filed in the Fulton County State Court, says. “Tarpley’s conduct — killing a teenager who was an involuntary passenger in a car suspected only of speeding (on a road where it is often dangerous to travel as slow as the speed limit) — shocks the conscience.”
A spokesperson for Georgia State Patrol, a division of the public safety department, said it does not comment on pending litigation.
A recent investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution examined the GSP’s aggressive pursuit record and its loose chase policy that gives troopers wide latitude to conduct pursuits. The review identified and analyzed 6,700 GSP pursuits over a five-year period ending in 2023.
The AJC found 3,400 of those chases resulted in crashes and at least 1,900 people were injured and 63 people died during that period. The deaths of Amarion Clotter and Dunn are in that group.
The AJC found that GSP’s aggressive pursuit record contributes to Georgia leading the nation in frequency of deaths from police pursuits. In 2023, for example, only 14 days passed in which a trooper wasn’t chasing someone.
In a written statement, the GSP said its pursuit policy is based on state law and judicial rulings and the agency has an active review process of its pursuits.
The public safety department’s investigation of the crash in which Amarion Clotter and Dunn died is heavily criticized in Shakenna Clotter and Heflin’s lawsuit. They claim the review was “undertaken to insulate the improper use of deadly force from scrutiny,” and that it involved multiple falsehoods.
Credit: Courtesy Shakenna Clotter
Credit: Courtesy Shakenna Clotter
In the department’s investigation, Amarion Clotter was identified as the driver of the Jeep despite “obvious” evidence, including video footage and witness testimony, that Dunn was the driver, the complaint alleges. The lawsuit states that Amarion Clotter was a back seat passenger who had urged Dunn to stop and unsuccessfully tried to exit the Jeep before the crash.
Tarpley’s PIT maneuver launched the Jeep “up an embankment, over ten feet into the air across an interstate entrance, and into trees and a wall,” the lawsuit states, adding that Amarion Clotter’s death was ruled a homicide by the Fulton County Medical Examiner.
Shakenna Clotter told the AJC that her son was a junior at Riverdale High School and planned to join the U.S. Army or Navy after graduating. He was excited about being a father and was interested in engineering and construction, she said.
“He was a very bright kid,” Shakenna Clotter said. “He was very excited about his life. And that was all taken from him prematurely.”
Credit: Courtesy Shakenna Clotter
Credit: Courtesy Shakenna Clotter
Shakenna Clotter said she hopes her lawsuit can help prevent another mother from experiencing the pain of losing a child “over something so minute” as a traffic chase. She said she wants state troopers to “think before they act and use other resources and options before they just choose to take people’s lives.”
“My son was not a bad child,” she said. “He was a passenger in this situation. My major prayer is that the next time they do a PIT maneuver, they will try to use other options and resources before they kill someone else’s child.”
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