Edit: Article updated to include a video interview with the widow of David Hooks as she recounts this tragic event.
David Hooks Killed in Botched Drug Raid
A Georgia SWAT team shot and killed an armed homeowner during a September 24 drug raid sparked by the word of a self-confessed meth addict and burglar who had robbed the property the previous day. No drugs were found.
According to WMAZ TV 13, Laurens County sheriff’s deputies with the drug task force and special response team (SWAT team) conducted a no-knock search on Hooks’ home in East Dublin on the evening of the 24th. When the raiders burst through the back door of the residence, they encountered Hooks’ carrying a shotgun. Multiple deputies opened fire, shooting [and] killing Hooks.
According to his family, Hooks was not a drug user or seller, but was a successful businessman who ran a construction company that, among other things, did work on US military bases. Hooks had passed background checks and had a security clearance.
The search warrant to raid Hooks’ home came about after a local meth addict named Rodney Garrett came onto the property two nights earlier and stole one of Hooks’ vehicles. Garrett claimed that before he stole the vehicle, he broke into another vehicle on the property and stole a plastic bag. Garrett claimed he thought the bag contained money, but when he later examined it and discovered it contained 20 grams of meth and a digital scale, he “became scared for his safety” and turned himself in to the sheriff’s office.
(Hooks’ family, however, said that Garrett had been identified as the burglar and a warrant issued for his arrest the day after the burglary. He was arrested the following day; the raid happened that same night.)
Garrett’s claims were the primary basis for the search warrant. But investigators also claimed they were familiar with the address from a 2009 investigation in which a suspect claimed he had supplied ounces of meth to Hooks, who resold it. Nothing apparently ever came of that investigation, but the five-year-old uncorroborated tip made it into the search warrant application.
And it was enough to get a search warrant from a compliant magistrate. Hooks family attorney Mitchell Shook said that even though the warrant was not a no-knock warrant, the Laurens County SWAT team did not announce its presence, but just broke down the back door of the residence.
Mitchell Shook, an attorney for Hooks’s family, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that deputies spent 44 hours searching Hooks’s home for drugs — yet they found nothing. The attorney also told the Macon Telegraph that the shooting didn’t happen the way the police say it did.
According to the family attorney’s account, Hooks was asleep when armed deputies arrived at his house at 1184 Ga. 319 just before 11 p.m. Sept. 24. His wife, Teresa, was upstairs in her craft room when she heard a car drive fast up the driveway, and she looked out the window.
“She saw several men all in black and camo with hoods on,” Shook said. “She ran downstairs, woke David and said, ‘The burglars are back.’ ”
Hooks retrieved a gun and headed out of the bedroom as the officers broke down the back door, Shook said. He said Hooks was not wounded at the door but behind a wall in his house.
“They may have seen him with a weapon, but it appears at that point in time it was chaos,” Shook said. “They were shooting everywhere. There’s a lot more to it than law enforcement has reported.”
He believes deputies fired 16 to 18 shots from multiple guns and assault rifles. Shook also questioned the wisdom of serving the warrant so late at night.
If this history of the arrogance and seeming incompetence of Deputy Chris Brewer below outrages you (and it will), please take a few seconds to sign this change.org petition and have Chris Brewer suspended from Laurens County for his role in the death of David Hooks as well as so many other cases stretching back well over a decade. Also please share this petition on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
Petition to Suspend Deputy Chris Brewer
Where is Don Lemon and all the other Ferguson Media Whores on this story?
When it comes to Ferguson and all the recent rallies no matter how minor and in what city all over the country you could find nearly non-stop coverage from CNN and others. But when it comes to David Hooks, which in my opinion is a much more compelling story because he was basically murdered inside his own home while doing absolutely nothing illegal, there has been hardly a peep. There have been a few articles here and there from the Atlanta Journal, Washington Post, and local media but nothing in comparison to Michael Brown or Eric Garner. In fact almost no coverage at all by any TV media outside of Georgia at all and very few print stories.
I am not saying those stories do not deserve the attention they are receiving, but people need to understand the anger and frustration is not simply about police fatalities by the police against black Americans. There are cases just as tragic against other races as well and the issue needs to be about American citizens of all races seeking justice. If anything is to change this needs to be about reforms that address police reforms for all citizens regardless of their race. Overreach and overreaction involving police brutality and police fatalities is very real and we need to take steps to address this immediately.
There is a rally for Mr. Hooks in Dublin, GA this Saturday December 13, 2014. But don’t expect Don Lemon or Anderson Cooper to show up even though this is just a few miles down the road from CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Unless there is looting, fires, and tear gas it seems the media don’t seem to give a damn. I volunteer to throw some tear gas towards CNN to boost their sagging ratings and give them a chance to bring out their gas masks if they cover a story nearly outside their front door. Where are you CNN and all the other media?
Please take 30 seconds and Sign this Petition right now and take a stand over the murder of an innocent man. Christopher Brewer needs to be suspended immediately.
Below are the Facebook Pages for David Hooks. Please visit and like these pages to show your support.
Justice for David Hooks
Rally for Justice for David Hooks December 13
Sheriff’s Office Cuts Off Jailhouse Interview After Deadly Raid On David Hooks’ Georgia Home
Attorney: Hooks shot in the back and head during raid
RELATED: David Hooks’ family investigating his death
RELATED: Hooks supporters plan rally Saturday in Dublin
ALSO: Anonymous videos target David Hooks shooting
Teresa Hooks, David’s wife, remembers the night clearly.
She says, “Between 10:30 and 11, I turned the light off upstairs. I heard a car coming up the driveway really fast, and I looked up the upstairs window. I saw a black vehicle with no lights. I saw 6 to 8 men, coming around the side of my house, and I panicked. I came running downstairs, yelling for David to wake up. He was in the bedroom asleep, had been for about an hour and a half. When I got downstairs to the bottom of the stairs, he opened the door and he had a gun in his hand, and he said, ‘Who is it?,’ and I said I didn’t know. He stepped back into the bedroom like he was going to grab his pants, but before he could do that, the door was busted down. He came around me, in the hall, into the den, and I was gonna come behind him, but before I could step into the den the shots were fired, and it was over.”
She says, “Initially, I thought that I was going to die, I thought I was going to be shot, I thought a gang had broke in, and up until I heard the radios the dispatch radios, I had no idea.”
Hooks says she sat outside in handcuffs for two hours after her husband was shot to death.
She says during that time, she had to watch her husband on a stretcher without a word from officers about what was going on.
Thank you for this article. It already has over 700 Facebook shares which is very impressive. You are absolutely correct that the national media is strangely silent on this story when it could be a story to bridge the racial divide and make people of all races demand that police fatalities like this case come to an end. No excuse for breaking in a home unannounced and murdering someone. Even if Mr. Hooks had drugs at his house which he didn’t, he still deserves not to be murdered in cold blood.
Out of curiosity I searched for David Hooks and a few other search terms on CNN and other sites and you are 100% correct. There is no coverage at all there. This story is even more tragic than Michael Brown or Eric Garner because whether you think their deaths were justified or not they both could have likely avoided their deaths had they simply fallen down on the ground when commanded by police to do so. But David Hooks was shot with no warning, no instructions, and in his own home. Anyone who is awoken and night and still groggy by home invaders will grab a gun. The fact that they shot him again in the head and shoulder while he was on the ground shows this was murder. I can’t imagine the horror that lady went through as she sat in handcuffs for 2 hours while her husband was bleeding on the floor a few feet away.
The truth of the matter is , whether you want to hear it or not is, Mr. David Hooks is a white male! If he had been a black man this story would have blown up all over national news and this is what’s wrong with the country now!!!
God bless you Mrs. Hooks I’m so sorry for your loss.
The media covered Ferguson because people got off their couches and made noise.
I think you are absolutely correct. Had there been rallies for David Hook of the same size and intensity as the ones in Ferguson it would have likely got some wider attention. I am not talking about the violence or looting either, simply a large and engaged peaceful group with some marching and loud chanting in front of the Laurens county sheriff’s office. But ultimately national media attention will not effect the results of a Grand Jury or investigation so let’s hope that the people responsible for his death which includes a large group from a judge to many deputies as well as the sheriff are punished for their crime.
Every cop has a 007 license to kill and maim any citizen with complete impunity. My country is no longer. RIP
If the Feds do not conduct their own independent investigation nothing will ever be done. Allowing local or state authorities to investigate is a joke. Corruption has run rampant in Laurens County for years and a select few drug dealers thrived because they knew who to pay.
If the Feds do not conduct their own independent investigation nothing will ever be done. Allowing local or state authorities to investigate is a joke. Corruption has run rampant in Laurens County for years and a select few drug dealers thrived because they knew who to pay.