A Georgia man was fatally shot by police Wednesday after he was wanted a day earlier in the murders of his estranged wife and the mother of his children, according to authorities.
Coweta County police responded to a Sharpsburg home Tuesday night to find Vennessa Phillips shot to death, allegedly by Dustin Phillips, 11 Alive, The Newnan Times-Herald and Atlanta News First reported.
The Coweta County Sheriff’s Office began searching for Dustin Wednesday morning, saying he is wanted for aggravated murder and is “considered armed and dangerous.”
The sheriff’s office said in a subsequent Facebook post that on Wednesday night, officers responded to the same location where Venness was found dead after Dustin was reported to have been there. Dustin “fired” at officers and died when deputies “returned fire and struck him,” the sheriff’s office said in a release.
Dustin, who had five children with Venness, allegedly shot her in front of their 4-year-old daughter, 11 Alive reported.
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Vennessa’s brother Jeyson Brooks said for Times-Herald that the couple’s relationship was full of abuse and tension and that Dustin was a “bad habit” for her.
“She didn’t want to give up on him,” he said Times-Herald. “She gave him so many chances because she had a heart full of hope.”
He also said Dustin lured Vennessa to move with him to rural Tennessee with promises “that never worked out.”
“It was hell for them, a life of poverty,” Brooks said, according to Times-Herald.
He alleged that Vennessa called the police on several occasions but claimed that Dustin would “just run off into the woods” – something that had become a “very familiar pattern”.
Brooks said he was finally able to convince Vennessa to return to Georgia and be near her family, and she moved with her five children about a year before her death.
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Source: HIS Education