At around 6 a.m. this past Friday in Smyrna, Georgia, a stolen orange-and-white U‑Haul truck pulled up at McLinden Avenue and Concord Road SE and came to a halt under heavy police presence. An officer had spotted the vehicle and initiated a felony traffic stop. The driver, later identified as 46-year-old Darrick Desawn Rooks of Marietta, was inside. Multiple commands were issued to him, and then, as the light was just coming up, a gunshot rang out from inside the cab. Officers returned fire. When they crept up to the truck, Rooks lay dead from a gunshot wound. No officers were injured.
Rooks wasn’t the original renter of the U-Haul. According to a company contractor with U-Haul who spoke to local media, the box truck had been rented earlier in the month by a woman and was supposed to be returned October 8. It reportedly wasn’t, and a theft report was filed on October 23. How Rooks ended up behind the wheel remains unknown.
The scene was tense, officers acknowledged. “Traffic stops can be very uncertain, especially before daylight,” Smyrna Police Department Lt. Meredith Holt said, noting the extra edge of risk when it’s still dark outside. Meanwhile the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) has taken over the case to look into who fired first, whether a weapon was recovered, and all the details of the sequence.
At home, Rooks’ fiancée, Chantriece Marrow, answered his voicemail just moments after the shooting. Through tears she described hearing his final plea: “Help me. Somebody help me.” They had been homeless and living in the very truck, she said, and she does not believe he would have fired at police. “I got a voicemail. I heard everything before he took his last breath,” she shared.
Despite the dramatic exchange, key questions remain unanswered. Investigators have yet to publicly confirm whether Rooks discharged a firearm, whether any weapon was found in the vehicle, or whether the bullet that struck him came from an officer or from somewhere else. The GBI spokeswoman said the case will be turned over to the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office once their autopsy and investigation conclude.
For the few residents awake at the time, the sound of four or five quick shots was enough to pull them from bed. One nearby said she heard the fusillade, followed by sirens, and struggled to reconcile the normal early-morning street with what happened.
Meanwhile, the truck sits, towed and part of the investigation. Friends describe Rooks as a man down on his luck but not violent, someone trying to scrape by when life gave him few breaks. The investigation isn’t just about what happened inside that truck — it’s also about how two lives collided in an uncertain moment before the sun fully rose.
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