GBI Continues Lavonia Pastor Death Probe

There were new details Monday in the shooting of a Georgia pastor who was killed by police in a botched drug sting. Witnesses provided a new perspective on the case, but the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said it could be weeks before they know what happened.

Plainclothes officers shot and killed the small-town pastor when the 28-year-old father-to-be resisted efforts to question him about a passenger in his car who was the target of a drug sting, authorities said.

Ayers, pastor of the Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, wasn't targeted in the probe that ended in gunfire at a gas station Tuesday, Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. But drug task-force agents opened fire on him after he tried to avoid them, putting his car in reverse and striking one of the officers.

Bankhead said agents approached Ayers after he dropped a woman off at a store in downtown Toccoa, which is about 90 miles northeast of Atlanta. The passenger was the person being investigated by the task force.

A grainy surveillance video from a nearby store shows two drug task-force agents emerge from a black SUV before Ayers' small car backs up. The two men fire into the passenger side of Ayers' car, and then it takes off with the agents running behind it.

Bankhead said Ayers died Wednesday, about an hour after he had surgery. He said the agent who was hit by Ayers' car was treated for minor injuries.

Ayers was laid to rest Friday.

Bankhead would not disclose the identity of the woman who was in Ayers' car, but said she's been charged with cocaine possession and distribution.