The family of a 16-year-old boy shot and killed by a Henry County police officer in Stockbridge, Georgia, has hired two nationally known civil rights attorneys — Harry Daniels and Gerald Griggs — the lawyers announced on Thursday, November 12, escalating a case that has drawn community outrage across Henry County since the shooting on November 3. The attorneys say the family wants the truth about why the teenager was stopped in the first place, and they are demanding the release of body-camera video and the name of the officer involved, neither of which the Henry County Police Department has made public.

Source: Family attorneys' statement, November 12, 2026

In line with this newsroom's policy for minor victims, this report identifies the teenager by age and city only. His family and their attorneys have named him publicly: they describe an honor-roll junior at Woodland High School who had started his first job two weeks before he died and who hoped to become a pediatric nurse. Attorney Harry Daniels said in the family's statement: “This was a good kid with a bright future. He was 16 years old and he wasn't a threat to anyone.” The attorneys allege the officer “stole everything he was and everything he was going to be,” and say they will not stop until, in their words, justice is served. Those are the family's claims, made through counsel; the independent state investigation is still underway and has reached no conclusions.

Source: Family attorneys' statement, November 12, 2026

What the state investigators say happened

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), which is investigating at the Henry County Police Department's own request, gave this account in its November 4 statement. At about 6:33 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, a Henry County officer saw two teenagers, aged 16 and 17, in the parking lot of a Krispy Kreme at 120 Highway 138 West in Stockbridge. The officer approached and spoke with them briefly, then gave verbal commands for the 17-year-old to take his hands out of his pockets. According to the GBI, the 17-year-old then passed a handgun to the 16-year-old, who ran from the area carrying the gun. The officer pursued on foot, repeatedly ordering him to drop the gun. The GBI says the teenager did not drop it, and the officer fired, hitting him. Medical aid was provided at the scene, but the 16-year-old was pronounced deceased there. A gun was recovered at the scene, and no officers were injured.

Source: Georgia Bureau of Investigation

The questions that remain unanswered

Nine days after the shooting, several basic facts are still not public. The GBI's preliminary statement does not say why the officer first approached the two teenagers, whether the teenager pointed the weapon at anyone, or where he was struck. The officer who fired has not been identified. The family's attorneys say police have refused to release body-camera video. A community petition demanding the release of all video and a public explanation of why officers were at the scene has gathered support since November 9, and friends and family have held a vigil and memorial near the Highway 138 site, with a roadside cross and a red balloon release reported by Atlanta-area television.

Source: WSB-TV Atlanta coverage

The teenager's classmates and teachers have remembered a student who wore scrubs to school because he dreamed of a career in medicine — details carried in Atlanta-area reporting and in the family's own statements. The other teenager, aged 17, has not been publicly identified, and neither agency has announced any charge against him; this report does not name him either, as he is also a minor.

How Georgia handles police shootings — and what happens next

In Georgia, it is standard practice for a local department to hand a shooting by one of its own officers to the GBI, the state investigative agency, precisely so that the inquiry is independent. The GBI's role is fact-finding: when its investigation is complete, the full case file goes to the Henry County District Attorney's Office, which alone decides whether the officer's actions were justified under Georgia law or whether charges follow. That review has no public deadline. The GBI is asking anyone with information to call its Atlanta Regional Investigative Office in Conyers at 770-388-5019, or to submit an anonymous tip at 800-597-TIPS (8477).

Source: Georgia Bureau of Investigation

With Daniels and Griggs now representing the family, the case enters the phase familiar from other Georgia police-shooting cases: public pressure for the video, a family-led campaign alongside the official investigation, and a long wait for the district attorney's decision. The family's next public steps have not been announced. What is certain is that the two accounts of November 3 — the state's, in which a teenager ran from an officer while holding a handgun that was later recovered, and the family's, in which witnesses say an unarmed boy was shot in the back as he fled — cannot both be complete, and the unreleased video is the evidence both sides are now fighting over.