ATLANTA — Bleckley County Sheriff Kristopher Coody is accused of groping a prominent Atlanta area judge while the Georgia Sheriff's Association was holding its winter meetings at an Cobb County hotel, documents claim.
According to the warrant, that incident happened at the Renaissance Waverly Atlanta hotel bar last month. The warrant states Coody "did place his hand" on the victim's body parts, without the victim's consent.
RELATED: Cobb County police issue arrest warrant for Georgia sheriff following sexual battery investigation
Cobb County Police announced an arrest warrant for Coody on Wednesday, following a sexual battery investigation. It was originally issued Jan. 28 before the department made the warrant public with a news release.
The Bleckley County Sheriff's Office issued a release on Thursday saying Coody is outside the state of Georgia on a church-sponsored mission trip "that has been scheduled for nearly a year."
"Sheriff Coody has been a law enforcement officer for more than two decades and has tremendous respect for our court system. He is taking these allegations seriously and will meet with the appropriate authorities as soon as he returns," the release by the Bleckley Sheriff's Office said.
State personnel files show Coody has a history of alleged improper conduct.
His Georgia law enforcement certification record indicates he was terminated in the past by the Georgia State Patrol in 2007, where he had been for roughly 20 years.
A case summary attached to his file details allegations of improper conduct in at least two instances, though the report's dates make it unclear whether at the time he was employed by GSP or the Beckley County Sheriff's Office.
The file documents an 2007 incident in which Coody was allegedly in an argument with a friend, ultimately ending with the friend hitting Coody's 12-year-old son, after he threatened to punch the friend - "striking him in the face with enough force to knock him to the ground."
The case summary then details how Coody allegedly took his son and left the scene, then did not cooperate with investigating officers. Coody's 10-year-old daughter was also allegedly a witness to the incident.
The file also states that during the investigation into that incident, Coody's ex-spouse filed a criminal complaint against him for allegedly allowing a 12-year-old girl to drive his patrol cruiser on the highway.
It adds that he admitted to internal affairs investigators that he had allowed both the 12-year-old girl and his ex-spouse to drive the cruiser, while "an independent witness confirmed seeing the child driving the patrol unit on the highway while the officer's brother rode in the passenger's seat of the marked vehicle."
The investigation held that he had "hindered a criminal investigation" when he removed his son from the scene where he had been hit, and did not report to his supervisor that was under investigation for the incident and had eventually been interviewed by police.
"After the internal agency investigation was completed the agency elected to terminate this officer for Improper Conduct," it states.