Fire chief fatally shot while helping a couple whose car struck a deer in Alabama

CHAMBERS COUNTY, Ala. — A man fatally shot a fire battalion chief and wounded the driver of a car that hit a deer in rural Alabama, authorities said.

The Coweta County fire department is mourning the death of James Bartholomew Cauthen, 54, remembering him as “an amazing, hard-working man with a gentle soul,” who worked for the department for more than 24 years, according to a Facebook post.

Cauthen was helping a couple whose car had struck a deer Sunday afternoon in Chambers County, Alabama, just west of the border with Georgia, the sheriff department wrote in a Facebook post. Cauthen, the battalion chief for the Coweta County Fire Rescue in Georgia, walked with the driver to a nearby property to ask for help because the couple couldn’t get service, Chambers County Sheriff Department Chief Deputy Mike Parrish told WRBL.

Authorities said the property owner, William Randall Franklin, 34, opened fire on Cauthen and the driver, killing Cauthen and wounding the driver. The driver was armed and returned fire, wounding Franklin. Law enforcement then arrived and took the driver and Franklin to a hospital. The driver’s wife never left the car and was uninjured during the shootout.

Court records in Georgia show that Franklin was arrested on Monday afternoon on a charge of being a fugitive from justice in Alabama. He is currently detained in the Muscogee County Jail. The Chamber’s County sheriff’s department said that there is a murder warrant for Franklin in Alabama.

There was no attorney listed to speak on Franklin’s behalf on Tuesday afternoon.

“Definitely an eerie sense of emptiness in the bay this morning,” Coweta County fire fighter Cody Darracott wrote on Facebook on Monday. The post described Cauthen as the “epitome of a Godly, selfless, hardworking man.”

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Associated Press writer Kate Brumback contributed to this report from Atlanta.