A recent fatal car accident between a Clayton County police officer and a young father on a Georgia expressway is now under investigation. Law enforcement is looking to see if the cop was responsible for the collision that took the life of the young man.
The devasting crash between CCPD Officer Cameron Pack and Kelvontae Zikel Banks happened on the morning of Friday, Nov. 4, in Riverdale on the 6800 block of Georgia Highway 85, according to FOX 5.
Riding with Banks, 21, was his 2-year-old son, who was sitting in the back seat of the vehicle.
Emergency workers arrived on the scene and transported all three individuals involved in the incident to hospitals.
Banks did not survive. The officer is still alive but the state of his condition has not been released.
The toddler was taken to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta – Egleston where they’re being treated for their injuries.
The Georgia State Patrol has picked up the case and sorted out the details that led up to the crash.
The officer involved in the collision explained to state troopers he was driving in the first lane north on the highway, going to a call.
According to the officer, Banks, driving in a blue Ford Fiesta turned left through an intersection going into a KFC restaurant from the center lane into the lane where the officer was, causing the cop to crash into him. The officer reportedly did not have his emergency lights and sirens activated.
The officer said he attempted to avoid the crash but was unable to.
The impact of the two vehicles colliding forced the CCPD cruiser off the right-side roadway, causing it to skid down a small hill into an empty parking lot. After sliding into the lot, the officer’s car hit the front of a building.
Banks’ car spun around after the accident, with the child in it, and turned north into the northbound lanes.
Banks’ father Butler arrived at the scene, according to 11 Alive, in a state of disbelief.
“My son is gone, man,” the dad said as he paced back and forth in the area where the accident happened.
“He was coming to pick his child’s mom up at 1 o’clock at this KFC and he was looking at him come in,” Butler shared, explaining what happened to his oldest son. “He saw my son turn in and this police officer came out of nowhere, with no lights on or nothing and he killed my son.”
Butler questioned if the officer took any “precautions” while he was “driving fast on the road,” believing as a result of his carelessness, his son is now dead.
“I can’t get my son back, somebody gotta cry with me I not going to be the only one crying about this,” he said.
When asked about his son, Butler spoke about his son with pride. He said, “My son is very respectful, very respectful if I’m in the house or out the house, it’s ‘yes sir, no sir.’ He always showed respect. He was just a bunch of fun and was just a big giant. My big guy, they took my big fun guy away.”
GSP continues to investigate this accident, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewing all of the evidence from the state agency’s specialized collision reconstruction team before closing it.
Packs, who was hired by the Clayton County Police Department in December of 2021, has been placed on administrative leave during the investigation.
