FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — Arrest warrants for the leader of a group that many people have characterized as "extremist" allege that a 911 call leading to a SWAT response and the finding of an 18-year-old dead inside the home was preceded by two group members being held against their will at gunpoint and one of them raped.
The warrants also say the 18-year-old, who police have said died by suicide during the SWAT standoff, was one of two armed individuals who locked the victims in the garage where the rape occurred.
The group, a self-styled revolutionary collective called the Black Hammer Party, meanwhile has said the 18-year-old, who they identified as "AP," was one of its leaders and refutes the claim that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The group's reported leader, Augusta Romain - known as Gazi Kodzo - is in custody following the incident this week in Fayetteville. He is facing charges including aggravated sodomy, two counts of conspiracy to commit a felony and criminal street gang activity, and two counts each of being a party to aggravated assault, being a party to false imprisonment and being a party to kidnapping.
The arrest warrants obtained by 11Alive on Friday say Romain directed AP and another member, 21-year-old Xavier Rushin - known as Keno - to "point guns" at two other members "and force them to move from the common area of the home into the garage with padlocks on the garage door so that Gazi could commit sodomy."
In the original incident, police said nine people voluntarily came out of the home when officers arrived on scene, with a robot later searching the home and finding AP "unresponsive with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."
The warrants do not make clear what happened during the standoff to the two members who'd allegedly been locked into the garage.
They do identify Rushin as the individual who was earlier reported walking a dog around the Woodbyne Subdivision and then allegedly ran off "when questioned about a kidnapping call we received from the address he lives at."
Rushin faces charges including aggravated assault, kidnapping, false imprisonment, conspiracy to commit a felony, criminal street gang activity and obstruction.
The warrants allege the Black Hammer Party is "an organization documented as a criminal street gang which engages in defined criminal acts."
The Black Hammers group, which orients itself around anti-capitalist and Black liberation themes, has previously announced associations with the Proud Boys and "declared war" against other leftist and liberal groups, such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, on the apparent grounds of being insufficiently revolutionary. It has also published narratives against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Big Pharma" and COVID vaccines.
The group itself claims it was operating as a sort of radical de-colonizing collective out of the house, working to feed and support homeless and poor communities.
11Alive spoke to Romain at the scene Tuesday, before his arrest, and he said, "I came outside, I talked to one of the officers. I told him we have someone in there who is mentally different."
He added at that time the 18-year-old "would never" take his own life.
Both Romain and Rushin are being held at the Fayette County Jail. Police have not yet offered any details about any of the other individuals who were at the home.