A sequence of events that ended in the murders of two Peach County sheriff’s deputies nearly two years ago began with a 20-second roadside encounter on a balmy fall Sunday afternoon.
A young man was motoring down a countryside-neighborhood road on a four-wheeler. He was on the outskirts of Byron, following another guy on a dirt bike, who was popping wheelies as they sputtered along.
The young man on the four-wheeler, Kelvin Ross, was using a cellphone camera to capture live-action video of the ride. His camera was recording as they approached the south end of Hardison Road, about 10 miles northeast of Fort Valley.
At the edge of the road stood Ralph Stanley Elrod Jr., lurking at the end of his driveway, armed with a shotgun. The motorcyclists eased to a stop in front of him.
Ross’s cellphone video of their encounter on Nov. 6, 2016, and police dashcam footage from patrol cars of the sheriff’s deputies who would later arrive to deal with the confrontation combine to paint the clearest picture yet of an episode that may never be fully understood. Because what, exactly, compelled Elrod, out of the blue, to whip out a Glock 43 pistol and execute two lawmen who’d come to arrest him for threatening the motorbikers will likely forever remain a mystery.
Elrod’s son, Jarrod, who at the time was himself a sheriff’s deputy in another county, has said his father was bitter, possibly consumed by anger, and known to act unpredictably — especially when he was drinking.
And on that fateful Sunday afternoon, as the senior Elrod would tell investigators, he had downed at least a six-pack.
Elrod, an electrician by trade who at the time was 57, pleaded guilty last week to murdering deputies Daryl Smallwood and Patrick Sondron. Though he had faced a death penalty trial, Elrod’s plea led to two life-without-parole sentences.
Footage obtained by The Telegraph through an open records request shows the minutes before and after the slayings and includes never-before-publicly-seen video of what unfolded that day.
