Ga. Cop Arrested On Charges She Lied About Shooting

JACKSON, GA — A Georgia police officer was taken into custody on Monday, charged with lying about being shot while on duty.

Sherry Hall, of the Jackson Police Department, faces charges of making false statements, tampering with evidence, interference with government property and violation of oath of office.

Hall claimed a black man shot her in the early-morning hours of Sept. 13 while she was on patrol in Jackson, about 50 miles southeast of Atlanta.

The resulting search for the shooter spanned multiple police agencies, including the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, where two posts spent more than 600 hours on the hunt.

"After following the leads and evidence, the investigation has now revealed that there is no, and never was, a suspect shooter at large in Jackson, Georgia," the GBI said in a news release.

Hall was booked into the Butts County Detention Center without incident, the GBI said.

Last week, the agency said she was being treated in a private facility.

At about 12:08 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 13, Hall called out over police radio that she had been shot.

Afterward, through three separate interviews with the GBI, she maintained that she was shot by a black male positioned near the wood line near a cul-de-sac, the bureau says.

Hall was reportedly shot in the abdomen area and the shot was blocked by her body armor.

She also told agents that she never engaged her car video or audio recording equipment, the GBI says. But in the course of the investigation, "video and audio evidence was recovered from the hard drive of the unit" that contradicted her story, according to the GBI.

When agents showed her the video, Hall stopped cooperating with the investigation, a GBI news release says.

The video led investigators to get a search warrant for a police department handgun that Hall had been issued on July 1. She had failed to reveal to the GBI that the handgun was in her possession, investigators say.

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