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Manhunt ongoing after suspect takes off following crash on I-20

ATLANTA — Police are searching for a man they say crashed a rental truck after he tried to hit an officer near I-20 East at Boulevard.

Shaquala Brown works at a restaurant on Boulevard in Atlanta a couple of hundred yards away, where police said the man tried to hit the officer with a U-Haul truck.

"Can't have him living on the street. There's enough going on already," Brown said. "Then, you got this man on the street that just runs off like that. The world is just sad."

Police had to use a crane to pull the truck out of the ditch on the side of the interstate.

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Just before 7 a.m., a Georgia State Patrol trooper drove up on a crash scene on the Boulevard ramp. As the trooper gave the man some verbal commands, police say he tried to pull off.

As a result, another trooper and a capital police officer got out of their cars and yelled to the man to stop.

When the man tried to hit one of the officers, the capital police officer fired two shots at him. Police say the man then tried to drive onto I-20 but hit a guardrail.

Police say the man took dramatic measures to get away by jumping out of the truck and running across all the lanes of I-20 toward a shopping plaza just past some trees.

A gas station store clerk told Channel 2 Action News that police ran into her store looking for the man but he was not there.

Customers at the store said it is important for police to catch the man because it seems like he will hurt anyone to avoid capture.

"You don't want another incident occurring," a store customer said.

Police are still trying to locate the suspect and are working on identifying the man from the rental truck agreement.