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Suspected bank robber shot dead by police
Officer's gun fires during struggle
By Tim Sturrock - [email protected]


A Macon police officer shot and killed a suspected bank robber Monday who led police on a foot chase after crashing his car on Interstate 75, police said.

Robert Alexander Bodden, 23, of Gordon, was shot in his chest after grabbing an officer's gun following the chase, Macon police Capt. Jimmy Barbee said.
Police said Bodden hopped a fence separating I-75 from Riverside Drive and sprinted to the Waffle House on Riverside Drive where he was shot.

"The gun went off when (the officer) tried to break the guy's grip," Barbee said. "He didn't intentionally shoot him."

Minutes before 1 p.m., police say Bodden, with the help of a 15-year-old girl, robbed the Bank of America at 2720 Riverside Drive. The two were unarmed and used a note to rob the bank, police said. The teenager is a runaway now charged with robbery by intimidation, police said. Bodden and the teen fled from the bank in a silver Lincoln sedan, witnesses told police.

A Macon police officer spotted the get-away car near Spring Street as it drove onto Interstate 16 west and then I-75 north. Several officers entered I-75 and an officer tried to pull over the vehicle, which fled toward Pierce Avenue. Investigators at the scene and other officers got ahead of the chase and shut down I-75 near the Pierce Avenue exit.

After the suspect's vehicle rammed a police car, Bodden fled across the interstate while officers apprehended the female inside the vehicle in the median of the interstate. Bodden ran toward the Waffle House, where he was shot, not far from the Bank of America.

He was pronounced dead at The Medical Center of Central Georgia about an hour after the robbery.

Barbee said the officer who shot Bodden had his weapon drawn as Bodden jumped from a small retaining wall near the restaurant.

Bodden then fell to his hands and knees, turned toward the officer and grabbed his weapon, Barbee said.

However, a woman who said she witnessed the shooting said she didn't see a struggle.

"I didn't see (Bodden) tussling. I didn't see (Bodden) reaching," 25-year-old Nicole Harden Johnson said.

She said she and her mother were stopped at a traffic light near the Waffle House where Bodden was shot.

She said she saw Bodden fall to his chest and an officer standing near his feet.

A second officer went to his knees and that's when she heard, but did not see, the gun go off, she said. She said the officer had his back to her.

Police said three witnesses, who were dining at the Waffle House, back up the police version of events.

A swarm of officers from both the police department as well as the Bibb County Sheriff's Office responded to the scene, which was roped off in crime tape.

To contact writer Tim Sturrock, call 744-4347.To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303.

They could of talked to him.

If the cops didnt have guns this would of never happened.

Ban guns, for the bank robbers.