[New] CIRCUIT MAGAZINE ISSUE 64

EP Agent for Atlanta mayor indicted in deadly 2019 carjacking shooting

An Atlanta police officer who was assigned to former Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Executive Protection Unit has been indicted and suspended without pay for shooting an alleged carjacking suspect at a gas station in January 2019.

Officer Oliver Simmonds was indicted Friday on charges of felony murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and two counts of violation of oath of public office.

Simmonds, who was off-duty and in plain clothes, pumping gas at a Shell station when 18-year-old D’Ettrick Griffin "allegedly jumped into the driver’s seat of Simmonds’ unmarked SUV."

The DA’s office said Simmonds shot Griffin as he tried to steal the city-issued SUV. The GBI said Griffin was able to drive off with the officer’s vehicles but crashed into two other cars a short distance away.

There was no indication Griffin had a weapon, the GBI said.

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A Russian woman whose family had links to the Kremlin was made a director of the Security Institute, which has close ties to Westminster.

Anastasia Spiridonova, 23, who speaks six languages and is described by several colleagues as ‘exceptionally charming’, is connected to the Putin regime through members of her family. Her grandfather was an MP in Putin’s United Russia party, while her mother Marina worked at the Kremlin in a department running resort hotels and presidential retreats around Russia.

Meanwhile, Ms Spiridonova’s father, Grigory Bryukhov, was once president of Intourist, the privatised successor of the giant Soviet travel agency that was notoriously riddled with KGB spies.

After spending her early years in Moscow, Ms Spiridonova moved to the UK. She was educated at £40,000-a-year Sevenoaks School in Kent and studied modern languages at Stanford University in the US.

She eventually got a job with a detective firm and then joined the Security Institute, but she eventually agreed to step down in June after less than two months. Source >