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The Coweta County fire department is mourning the death of James
Bartholomew Cauthen, 54, remembering him as “an amazing,
hard-working man with a gentle soul,” who worked for the
department for more than 24 years, according to a Facebook post.
Cauthen was helping a couple whose car had struck a deer Sunday
afternoon in Chambers County, Alabama, just west of the border
with Georgia, the sheriff department wrote in a Facebook post.
Cauthen, the battalion chief for the Coweta County Fire Rescue
in Georgia, walked with the driver to a nearby property to ask
for help because the couple couldn't get service, Chambers
County Sheriff Department Chief Deputy Mike Parrish told WRBL.
Authorities said the property owner, William Randall Franklin,
34, opened fire on Cauthen and the driver, killing Cauthen and
wounding the driver. The driver was armed and returned fire,
wounding Franklin. Law enforcement then arrived and took the
driver and Franklin to a hospital. The driver’s wife never left
the car and was uninjured during the shootout.
Court records in Georgia show that Franklin was arrested on
Monday afternoon on a charge of being a fugitive from justice in
Alabama. He is currently detained in the Muscogee County Jail.
The Chamber's County sheriff's department said that there is a
murder warrant for Franklin in Alabama.
There was no attorney listed to speak on Franklin’s behalf on
Tuesday afternoon.
“Definitely an eerie sense of emptiness in the bay this
morning," Coweta County fire fighter Cody Darracott wrote on
Facebook on Monday. The post described Cauthen as the “epitome
of a Godly, selfless, hardworking man.”
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Associated Press writer Kate Brumback contributed to this report
from Atlanta.
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