Sheriff: Sgt. Marc McIntyre, deputy killed in line of duty, was shot through a window

SHEILA A. MATHEWS :::

The Spalding County deputy shot and killed Friday morning was Sgt. Marc McIntyre, a eight-year veteran of the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office.

The GBI is conducting the investigation of McIntyre’s death.

“They are at the scene processing it, and they are here interviewing deputies that were on scene. They are conducting the investigation. It was turned over to them at the scene,” Dix said. 

The suspect has been identified as Todd Harper.

Dix said the 911 call originally came out as a welfare check on Harper. 

“Marc and the other deputies got there and they were walking down the side of the house. It’s almost like Marc was communicating with the guy through the wall, as they’re walking down in front of the house,” Dix said. “When Marc got in front of a window, the guy shot through the window and the blast got him in the face and the side of the head.”

Dix said Harper shot McIntyre with a shotgun.

After McIntyre was gravely wounded, other deputies on scene were unable to immediately render aid, as they were forced to take cover and return fire while under fire themselves, Dix said.

“It was a gun battle. It was more than just that guy shooting him in the head with a shotgun. There was an active gunfight between deputies outside that house and this guy as they tried to get to Marc to get him out of the zone,” Dix said, adding that another deputy sustained injuries to their hand, but that it was not a gunshot wound. “Marc was the only deputy that was struck by gunfire.”

Dix confirmed that McIntyre and other deputies were not at Harper’s residence with an arrest warrant, and no attempt was made to take him into custody prior to McIntyre being shot.

“There was no indication (Harper was going to fire). I haven’t watched the footage, but in speaking to the deputies that were there, it was just Marc talking to him, trying to get him to talk to them, to come out,” Dix said. “It was a welfare check. They went there to talk to him. They didn’t have guns in their hands. He’s the one who opened fire. They were trying to deescalate and find out what was going on with him.”

Dix said EMTs on the scene called for McIntyre to be flown by air ambulance to the Grady Memorial Hospital Trauma Unit, but his condition was too unstable. He was instead transported by ambulance to WellStar Spalding Regional Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

The SCSO received tactical support from multiple law enforcement agencies, and Harper was ultimately taken into custody after armored vehicles were used to dismantle his residence.

“We tried to negotiate with him. We tried to convince him to come out. He refused. It just finally got to the point where, you know what? If you aren’t going to come out, we’re going to come in, and when we come in, we’re going to tear your house apart until we find you. That’s what we did,” Dix said. “There were multiple times when that was going on that we could see him inside the house, going down a hallway, going into another room while this was going on. And we continued. There were times we stopped and called out to him to try and get him to surrender, but he wouldn’t. It finally got to the point where he was cornered in one of the only areas in the house that he could still be in, and he was taken into custody.”

Harper was said to be hiding under a mattress when he was apprehended.

Todd Harper is being held in the Spalding County Jail.

“One of the detention supervisors I was talking to just a few minutes ago said that Marc got along with everybody, that he didn’t judge people by their lot in life or who they were, that he always found a common denominator in people and that’s that they were humans and that’s how he treated them like they were human, no matter who they were. I thought that was a good way to describe him,” Dix said. “I never heard him say a bad thing about anybody, and I never heard anybody say a bad thing about him.”

As McIntyre was fighting for his life, local social media discussions included comments referring to Harper as a “sweet man” who allegedly suffered from PTSD as a military veteran.

In response to those sentiments, Dix said, “Whether he’s a sweet man or not, or had PTSD or not, I have a deputy who was shot in the head and is dead. Him having PTSD or any other mental illness doesn’t make my deputy any less dead. It doesn’t make me feel any better about it. It doesn’t make his fiancé feel any better about it.”

Dix also addressed McIntyre’s own lifetime of service to country and community.

“Marc served this country as a Ranger, a combat veteran. He came back and wanted to serve his community and was killed here,” Dix said. “One of the deputies that I talked to was talking about it and he said Marc didn’t deserve to go out that way. After serving his country in the military…that he didn’t deserve to go out that way.”