The bullet that struck an Atlanta-area police officer — hit after responding to a burglary call at the wrong house — likely came from a fellow officer's gun, investigators said Tuesday.
The homeowner, Christopher McKinley, 36, was also shot by one of three responding DeKalb County officers who entered his house on accident Monday night, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He was treated and released from a hospital, the GBI said.
A dog in the home was shot at by two of the officers and killed, authorities said.
The GBI said in a statement Tuesday that the "injured officer was likely shot accidentally by one of the other officers on the scene." The officer, identified later Tuesday as Travis Jones, who's been with the department for 10 months, underwent surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital and was reported serious but stable.
The two other officers — Quhanna Lloyd, an eight-year veteran, and Timothy Harden, a five-year veteran — were placed on administrative leave pending investigations by the GBI and the DeKalb County district attorney's office, authorities said.
"Chris said out here: 'I don't even have a gun. Why did they shoot me?'" Tama Colson, a next-door neighbor of McKinley's who heard the shots, told NBC station WXIA of Atlanta.
"'Why did they shoot my dog?'" she quoted McKinley as saying. "'Who are they?'"
Cedric Alexander, the interim public safety director in DeKalb County, told reporters Monday night that the officer who was shot was hit in the thigh and "lost a lot of blood."
The officers responded to a call for a burglary in progress about 7:30 p.m. ET, but they went to the wrong address because the caller gave only a description of a "brick-and-tan one-story home" without an address, authorities said.
The GBI said that the initial investigation shows that the house the three officers entered was unrelated to the initial 911 call and that investigators have found no evidence of criminal activity in the home the officers entered.
