South Fulton County

South Fulton teacher who shot ex-roommate suing police department for ‘false arrest’

SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — A teacher in the city of South Fulton is suing South Fulton police for what he calls a false arrest that set his career back at least two years.

Roger Matthis shot his former roommate, Terrill Terry, after Terry kicked in the door to Matthis’ home in February 2020.

South Fulton police arrested Matthis that night and charged with aggravated assault.

They say he was arrested because Terry had a protective order against Matthis.

“It just destroyed my life. It just destroyed my life for two years,” he said.

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Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes has learned that Matthis also has a protective order against Terry. Matthis says if they had run his former partner’s name, they would have seen the protective order and known it was Matthis’ home.

Several days later, Matthis was charged with reckless conduct because one of the bullets he fired grazed an officer’s uniform.

“This was a rookie police officer, and so essentially she didn’t find out her jacket was damaged until the next day. She immediately made her supervisors aware,” South Fulton Police Chief Keith Meadows said.

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Police did not document it for several more days. Matthis believes it was made up.

“If we already arrested Mr. Matthis, I don’t see why we would need to make up any additional charges,” Meadows said.

Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges.

Meadows said officers did nothing wrong that day.

When Fernandes asked if officers ran Terry’s name before arresting Matthis, he could not confirm it.

“Well, as I said, they were responding to the circumstance they had. I can’t say they ran Terry’s name at that time, but we have several different databases we draw from,” he replied.

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