Murder of Kyle Dinkheller

Traffic stop On January 12, 1998, near the end of his shift, Deputy Kyle Wayne Dinkheller of the Laurens County, Georgia, sheriff's office, encountered a speeding Toyota Pickup near Dudley, Georgia, United States, which he clocked at around . The deputy pulled the truck over on Whipple Crossing Road, adjacent to Interstate 16. The traffic stop at first appeared to be routine, with both Dinkheller and the driver, Andrew Brannan, exiting their vehicles and exchanging greetings. Brannan, however, placed both hands into his pockets, at which point Dinkheller instructed him to remove his hands and keep them in plain view. At this point, Brannan became belligerent and yelled at the deputy to shoot him. He then began to dance and wave his arms in the middle of the road. Dinkheller radioed the dispatcher for assistance and issued commands for Brannan to cease his behavior and approach the cruiser. When Brannan saw that Dinkheller was calling for other units, he ran toward the deputy in an aggressive manner. Dinkheller retreated while issuing commands and utilized his baton to keep Brannan at bay. On Dinkheller's dashcam video, Brannan was heard shouting that he was a "goddamned Vietnam combat veteran." Shootout Despite commands issued by Dinkheller, Brannan walked back to his pickup truck and drew an Iver Johnson M1 Carbine from underneath the driver's seat, taking cover near the driver side door. Dinkheller positioned himself near the passenger door of his cruiser and gave Brannan commands for approximately forty seconds before Brannan stepped away from his pickup truck, pointed his rifle at Dinkheller and fired several shots. Dinkheller fired the first shot at Brannan but missed, leading some to speculate that it might have been a warning shot. Brannan then retreated into his truck and fled the scene. Aftermath Brannan was arrested the next morning without incident; he told the investigating authorities that "they can hang me". He was found guilty on January 28, 2000, for the murder of Dinkheller and was sentenced to death. On January 2, 2015, the Georgia Department of Corrections announced that an execution date of January 13 had been set for Brannan. On January 6, a clemency hearing was set for January 12, at which the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to deny clemency. On January 13, Brannan was executed by lethal injection, the first person in the U.S. to be executed in 2015. ==Perpetrator==

during the Vietnam War, 1970 Andrew Howard Brannan was born on Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama on November 26, 1948. He graduated from high school in 1967. In August 1968, Brannan joined the United States Army and received his induction training at Fort Benning in Georgia. In February 1969, he entered the artillery officer candidate school at Oklahoma's Fort Sill and was commissioned as an artillery officer in July 1969. During his service, Brannan witnessed an officer being killed after stepping on a landmine, an incident he later recalled during a psychiatric interview in 1989. Although Brannan's lawyers tried to get his death sentence commuted on the grounds that he was not criminally responsible for his conviction by reason of insanity, both the Georgia Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court refused to intervene on his behalf on the day his execution was scheduled to take place. Brannan made a final statement, in which he said, "I extend my condolences to the Dinkheller family, especially Kyle's parents and his wife and his two children" and, "I feel like my status was slow torture for the last fifteen years. I had to say that with them here. I have to tell the truth. I'm certainly glad to be leaving." He was executed one day after the 17-year anniversary of the shooting. ==Victim==

Kyle Wayne Dinkheller was a deputy with the Laurens County Sheriff's Office (LCSO) in the U.S. state of Georgia. After his death, he was named the 1998 Deputy Sheriff of the Year by the Georgia Sheriffs' Association. Dinkheller was born on June 18, 1975, in San Diego, California to Kirk Dinkheller. He graduated from California's Quartz Hill High School in 1993. He joined the LCSO as a jailer in March 1995 and became a certified police officer with the State of Georgia in 1996. He was 22 years old when he was killed. The "Dinkheller video" The video recording of the killing, known as the "Dinkheller video", has become ubiquitous in U.S. police academies. The video has, for instance, been adapted to include an interactive sequence in which trainees encounter Brannan before he kills Dinkheller. ==In popular culture==

• The incident is the focus of the 2014 short film Random Stop. • The incident is the focus of the 2018 documentary film, Dinkheller. • The incident is sampled in the song "I Just Killed A Cop Now I'm Horny" by rapper JPEGMAFIA. ==See also==