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Irlin Paz

Age : 40

Gender : Male

Race : Latino/a/e

Date : 09/22/2021

Location : Chamblee Heights Apartments, 136 Wiggins Way

City : Chamblee

County : DeKalb

State : Georgia

Agency : Chamblee Police Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during domestic disturbance call

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/22/2021, Chamblee Police Department officers shot and killed 40-year-old Irlin Paz at Chamblee Heights Apartments, 136 Wiggins Way, after responding to a 911 call reporting a domestic aggravated assault. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation subsequently investigated the police shooting.
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At approximately 6:30 a.m., Chamblee officers were dispatched to the apartment complex for the reported domestic assault. When officers arrived, police alleged that they encountered Paz armed with a knife and actively attacking a woman.
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According to the GBI, officers immediately intervened and at least one Chamblee officer fired at Paz, striking him. Paz died at the scene.
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The woman Paz was allegedly attacking also died at the scene. Another man inside the residence suffered multiple stab wounds and was transported to Grady Memorial Hospital, where he underwent surgery. Investigators said their preliminary information indicated that the injured man had been stabbed while attempting to stop Paz from attacking the woman.
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The original police shooting therefore occurred during an extraordinarily violent domestic incident in which two people died and a third person was seriously wounded. The available evidence does not support minimizing those circumstances: police alleged that officers arrived while Paz was actively attacking the woman with a knife rather than confronting him after the violence had already ended.
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The GBI assumed responsibility for independently investigating the police use of deadly force. The Chamblee Police Department separately investigated the original 911 call, aggravated assault and homicide. The GBI said its completed shooting investigation would be forwarded to the DeKalb County District Attorney's Office for review.
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Later public records located for this update still do not identify the Chamblee officer or officers who fired. The GBI's statewide 2021 police-shooting record confirms Paz's death as Chamblee Police Department shooting number 72 investigated by the agency that year, but does not identify the shooter.
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No affirmative evidence located for this update establishes that Paz's family, the surviving wounded man or another eyewitness publicly contested the police account of the final confrontation. No encounter-related wrongful-death or federal civil-rights lawsuit arising from Paz's shooting was identified.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
The Chamblee Police Department officer or officers who shot Paz have not been publicly identified.
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Paz's killing was not Chamblee Police Department's only fatal police shooting in the period immediately surrounding this case. Approximately 14 months earlier, on 07/12/2020, Chamblee and Brookhaven officers shot and killed 28-year-old Marcos Reyes after police responded to reports of an armed man near Shallowford Terrace and Buford Highway. Police alleged that after officers attempted to communicate with Reyes for an extended period, he fired repeatedly toward them and multiple officers returned fire.
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More significantly, Chamblee officers were involved in another fatal shooting only four months before Paz was killed. On 05/17/2021, Chamblee police responded to a reported kidnapping, located the described vehicle and pursued it from Chamblee into Decatur. The encounter ended with police shooting and killing 21-year-old Tyrone Penny. The GBI again conducted the outside investigation. Thus, Paz was at least the third person killed in a police shooting involving Chamblee officers in roughly fourteen months.
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The department later experienced a serious internal criminal scandal involving one of its supervisory officers. In May 2024, Chamblee Police Lt. Roy Collar was arrested by the GBI and charged with two counts of distribution of child sexual abuse material after investigators obtained a search warrant for his home following a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children CyberTipline report.
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Collar was a Chamblee police lieutenant and was relieved of his duties after the arrest. Later reporting indicated that he had been with Chamblee police for approximately a decade and had previously received a reprimand, although the publicly reported material did not explain the underlying conduct.
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That later criminal case does not establish misconduct by the unidentified officer who killed Paz and is not evidence concerning the justification for this shooting. It is nevertheless substantive agency history because it involved a Chamblee Police Department supervisory officer being criminally accused of serious misconduct while serving with the department.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2021-09-22/gbi-investigates-officer-involved-shooting-chamblee
https://www.ajc.com/news/gbi-investigating-police-shooting-at-chamblee-apartment-complex/7IDFNFURQBG2FHDKTNJIQNWUII/
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/chamblee-officer-fires-shots-while-responding-to-domestic-violence-incident-police-say
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/crime/chamblee-police-officer-involved-shooting/85-58344f33-6c56-4080-b1da-4f30cc8658ee
https://gbi.georgia.gov/news/2022-05-20/2021-officer-involved-shootings
https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2020-07-12/gbi-investigates-officer-involved-shooting-chamblee
https://gbi.georgia.gov/press-releases/2021-05-19/gbi-investigates-officer-involved-shooting-decatur-ga
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/chamblee-police-lieutenant-arrested-on-child-porn-distribution-charges