A Georgia man was fatally shot by police on Wednesday after being the subject of a search in the killing of his estranged wife and mother of his children a day earlier, according to reports.
Police in Coweta County responded Tuesday evening to a home in Sharpsburg, where they found Vennessa Phillips shot to death, allegedly by Dustin Phillips.
Coweta County Sheriff’s Office began searching for Dustin Wednesday morning, claiming that he was wanted for felony murder and “considered armed and dangerous.”
The sheriff’s office said in a follow-up Facebook post that on Wednesday evening, officers responded to the same location where Vennessa was found dead after Dustin was reported to be there. Dustin “fired” at officers and died when deputies “returned fire and struck” him, the sheriff’s office said in the post.
Dustin, who had five children with Vennessa, allegedly shot her in front of their 4-year-old daughter.
Vennessa’s brother Jeyson Brooks said that the couple’s relationship was rife with abuse and tension and that Dustin was a “bad habit” for her.
“She didn’t want to give up on him,” he said. “She’d given him so many chances because she had such a hopeful heart.”
He also said that Dustin had lured Vennessa into moving to rural Tennessee with him with promises “that never worked out.”
“It was nothing but a living hell for them, living in poverty,” Brooks said.
He alleged that Vennessa called the police on several occasions but claimed Dustin would “just run off into the woods” – something that became a “very familiar pattern.”
Brooks said he was finally able to convince Vennessa to move back to Georgia be near her family and she had made the move with her five children about a year before her death.
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