Two men were recently arrested after a Fulton County law enforcement officer was repeatedly punched while working an extra job in Atlanta, officials said.
Eric Scott Cheers, a detention officer with the sheriff’s office, was left with a swollen eye and lip, cuts to his foot, missing teeth and a head injury, an incident report obtained Wednesday revealed. He was off duty and working a security detail at a northwest Atlanta liquor store Nov. 1 when the attack happened.
Xavier Evans, 29, was arrested Nov. 7 with the help of the sheriff’s office on charges of aggravated battery against a law enforcement officer and aggravated battery resulting in serious injury. Xavion Evans, 24, turned himself in at the county jail the next day on the same charges, Atlanta police said.
It was around 11:15 p.m. when Atlanta police were called to the HN Liquor Store in the 700 block of Joseph E. Boone Boulevard, just east of Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard. Cheers, 54, was visibly injured and was not able to provide much information to officers due to his injuries, the report states, but much of the incident was caught on camera.
Surveillance footage showed one of the suspects arriving in a white Ford Mustang. Cheers told the man around 8:40 p.m. that he could not bring his firearm inside the store, according to the report.
The same man returned around 11 p.m. with the second suspect in a white Mercedes-Benz, officials said. Footage showed them standing in the parking lot talking.
Cheers is then seen in the surveillance footage telling the suspects to “get the (expletive) off the property.” They then approached Cheers and began to punch him, the video shows.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reached out to the Fulton sheriff’s office for a statement and information on the injured detention officer but did not hear back. According to the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST), Cheers began working at the sheriff’s office in February 2023, and it’s his first law enforcement job.
According to a GoFundMe page created to raise funds for medical expenses, Cheers is a single father to three teenage daughters and is unable to work as he recovers from his injuries.
“This event has left him with a lot of very severe physical and mental trauma, causing him not to be able to physically care for himself or his three teenage children,” the creator of the campaign, Daryiah-Rose Williams, wrote.
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