CARROLL COUNTY, Ga. — A community and a sheriff's department are still reeling after a Carroll County deputy was shot in the head while helping execute a search warrant on Tuesday morning.
Deputy Taylor Bristow was rushed to the Grady Hospital, where he remains after undergoing emergency surgery. He was transferred to the intensive care unit, where he is now in a coma.
For the first time, Bristow's family released a statement on his behalf, thanking the community for their outpouring of love and support. His wife, Lyssa, posted the following message to the community on social media:
"We see everything and we feel everything. The love, the prayers, the thoughts, the well wishes.
We are fighting the good fight and APPRECIATE every little and big thing. It’s does not go without notice 🩷
I love you all and my words will never be able to form a true statement of what I feel inside. My heart is in a thousand pieces right now and I wish I had good news and a true update but we are not out of the woods yet and we need all the love, prayers and well wishes to continue! God is good and he is in control! ❤️🩹"
Bristow is a six-year veteran of the Carroll County Sheriff's Office. He first worked as a deputy and is now an investigator for the sheriff's office. Before that, he worked as a jailer for the Ware County Sheriff's Office. He also spent some time as an officer with Waycross Police.
The sheriff's office has had an outpour of support.
"Anytime you have a scene like this, it's very fluid. It's very active. Obviously, it's going to be an ongoing investigation for quite some time. We're very fortunate here that our community loves our law enforcement, so of course, they want to come out and try to help. We greatly appreciate that," said Ashley Hulsey of the Carroll County Sheriff's Office.
"We've also had a lot of assistance and offers from other agencies, really, throughout the state on what they could do to provide either assistance or any other type of help to the deputies and their families," she added.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said it was executing a child exploitation warrant, which was apart of an ongoing GBI investigation. The suspect died by suicide during the incident, the GBI said.