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Lawyer: Officer's actions 'heroic' before deadly shooting on prison bus

PUTNAM COUNTY, Ga. — Channel 2 Action News is gathering new details about the moments leading up to the shooting deaths of two officers on a prison bus.

Inmates Ricky Dubose and Donnie Rowe are accused of killing corrections officers Sgt. Curtis Billue and Sgt. Chris Monica on a bus in Putnam County earlier this month.

Dubose and Rowe are also accused of a number of other crimes while on-the-run for days before their capture in Tennessee.

Channel 2's Mark Winne spoke to the lawyer for the other inmates on the transport bus, who called one of the officer's actions before the shooting heroic.

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He said the accused inmates wanted to get off the bus, but the driver, Sgt. Billue, did not open the door.

"They wanted off the bus, the door was not opened and he was shot," attorney Ted Salter said.

Salter said in the moments after, the two escaping inmates made it through the door that was supposed to separate inmates from officers.

"That driver's family has nothing to be ashamed of," he said.

Salter said his investigation so far consists of conversations with inmates who were on the bus and others, and it suggests that long before the escape, the lock was not locked and the murder weapon, until moments before the shooting, was in some kind of box in the officers' compartment.

The capture of Ricky Dubose and Donnie Rowe.

"I've got other people to interview," he said.

Salter said he doesn't have as much information yet about Sgt. Monica.

Monica and Blillue were with more than 30 inmates moving between prisons on a Georgia Department of Corrections bus.

Salter said his focus now is on getting four inmates who were on that bus moved out of lockdown, and in the case of at least three of his clients -- out of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson and on to the facilities where they were originally headed the day of the escape.

The lawyer said he's not far enough into his investigation to know whether he will pursue legal action against the state.

A corrections statement this week said: "We will continue to review and assess the facts surrounding the incident and determine how to move forward."