The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has opened an independent investigation into the death of a 20-year-old man in Stone Mountain, DeKalb County, after a DeKalb County police foot pursuit that began with a report of an armed carjacking in the early hours of Sunday, November 1. According to the GBI's preliminary account, a county officer chased the man on foot into an apartment complex, deployed a Taser that hit him, and immediately afterwards heard a gunshot and found him on the ground with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. The man, identified by the GBI as Vermontay Burch, age 20, of Stone Mountain, was given medical assistance at the scene but was pronounced deceased there.

Source: Georgia Bureau of Investigation

What the GBI says happened

The sequence released by the GBI begins at about 4:51 a.m. on Sunday, November 1, 2026, when the DeKalb County Police Department (DKPD) received a report of an armed carjacking that had occurred in Stone Mountain, a community in DeKalb County east of Atlanta named for the giant granite dome that rises over it. The GBI does not say in its release where exactly the carjacking was reported to have taken place, and it gives no details about the person who reported being carjacked.

A DKPD officer responded to the area of Lancashire Circle and located a car matching the description in the carjacking report. As the officer approached the car, a man — later identified as Burch — got out of it and ran away. The officer pursued him on foot into an apartment complex near the 400 building of Eagle Springs Way, a residential street of apartment blocks a short distance away.

While running after Burch, the officer deployed a Taser, hitting him. Immediately after the officer deployed the Taser, the officer heard a gunshot and located Burch on the ground with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, the GBI said. Medical assistance was provided to Burch, but he was pronounced deceased on scene. Every part of that account is preliminary: the GBI describes its information as 'preliminary information' gathered at the start of its investigation, and the word 'apparent' in its description of the wound is the agency's own.

The autopsy, and the questions that remain open

Burch's body was taken to the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's Office, where an autopsy will be conducted. That autopsy is one of the central pieces of evidence still to come: it is the medical examiner, not the first officers on scene, who will formally determine the cause and manner of death. The GBI's release does not say whether the car Burch got out of was in fact the vehicle taken in the reported carjacking, does not name the officer who made the pursuit, and does not say whether anyone else was in the car or involved in the reported carjacking. Those are questions the investigation is expected to answer.

Why the GBI — and not DeKalb County police — is investigating

The investigation was handed to the state bureau at the county department's own request: 'At the request of the DeKalb County Police Department (DKPD), GBI agents are investigating a use-of-force incident and conducting a death investigation in Stone Mountain, GA,' the bureau said in its November 1 release. That separation is the point of the arrangement — the agency whose officer deployed force during the pursuit is not the agency examining what happened. The GBI says it will conduct an independent investigation, and once the investigation is complete, the case file will be turned over to the DeKalb Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office for review, which is where any decision about the lawfulness of what happened will ultimately be taken.

What happens next

Three things come next. First, the autopsy at the DeKalb County Medical Examiner's Office. Second, the GBI's independent investigation, which the bureau says is active and ongoing — its agents will work through the carjacking report, the pursuit and the Taser deployment in sequence. Third, the completed case file goes to the DeKalb Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office for review. The GBI is asking anyone with information to call its Atlanta Regional Investigative Office in Conyers at 770-388-5019. Anonymous tips can also be submitted by calling the GBI Tipline at 1-800-597-TIPS (8477), online through the bureau's tip page, or by downloading the 'See Something, Send Something' mobile application.

For residents of the Eagle Springs Way apartment blocks, the encounter began and ended before dawn on a Sunday, in the streets around their homes. For now, the confirmed record is narrow and entirely official: an armed carjacking reported at 4:51 a.m., a car matching its description found on Lancashire Circle, a foot chase, a Taser, a gunshot, and a 20-year-old Stone Mountain man dead at the scene — with the state's investigators, rather than the county force involved, now responsible for establishing everything beyond that.