CALHOUN, GA (WSB/CNN) - Authorities say a police officer was shot after attempting to investigate a woman’s vehicle because the driver allegedly smelled like marijuana.
A police officer was inside a BP gas station in Calhoun, GA, Tuesday when a woman in front of him ended up short on change, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
The officer helped the woman pay for the cigarettes she was buying, and they left the store at the same time.
As they walked out of the gas station, the officer smelled what he suspected to be marijuana, so he called another officer for backup for a suspicious vehicle.
When the two officers approached the vehicle, a woman in the passenger seat pulled a gun out of the glove box and shot officer Joe Yother, a 25-year veteran of law enforcement, in the arm, according to the GBI.
Yother and the other officer on the scene fired back at the female passenger, who was struck and killed.
The female driver, the woman who had been helped in the store, was arrested on unrelated charges, the GBI reports.
Yother was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
It is unclear whether Yother was the officer in the gas station or the officer who later arrived as backup.
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