Investigators say Deion Alexander drove through multiple red lights before a Feb. 2 collision that killed pedestrian Thomas Bush.
ATLANTA, GA — A former MARTA police officer has been charged in a deadly on-duty crash in Midtown Atlanta after investigators said he drove into a busy intersection while responding to a call for help on Feb. 2, setting off a collision that killed a 72-year-old pedestrian.
Deion Alexander, who was fired this week by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, surrendered at the Fulton County Jail on Wednesday and was charged with first-degree homicide by vehicle, reckless driving, unsafe operation of an emergency vehicle and failure to obey traffic control devices. The case has drawn attention because it involves a transit police officer, a fatal crash in one of Atlanta’s busiest corridors and fresh questions about how far officers can go when driving with lights and sirens during an emergency response.
The crash happened just after 1 p.m. on Feb. 2 near the intersection of North Avenue NE and Peachtree Street NE, close to MARTA’s North Avenue Station. MARTA officials said members of the agency’s Criminal Apprehension Team had been sent to the station after an officer there needed help with an arrest. Alexander was driving a patrol vehicle to that call with emergency lights and sirens activated when his cruiser collided with another car in the intersection. Authorities said the impact injured a passenger in the other vehicle, a pedestrian and three officers. The pedestrian, later identified as Thomas Bush, 72, was taken to a hospital and died from his injuries. Alexander turned himself in on March 18, one day after MARTA ended his employment following an internal investigation.
The public record around the crash now includes sharply different accounts of what happened in the moments before impact. Alexander’s attorney, Max Schardt, said his client was responding to a distress call from a female officer at the station and argued the case should be treated as a tragic accident, not a crime. Schardt said another car struck the patrol vehicle, causing it to spin and hit Bush. Investigators, however, described a more aggressive run to the scene. A legal document cited by local television stations said an officer reviewing the case found Alexander drove through 11 red lights in 93 seconds before reaching North Avenue and Peachtree. The same document said traffic camera footage showed him entering that intersection against a red light and moving into oncoming traffic. Police have not publicly released the video, and prosecutors had not laid out their evidence in open court as of Thursday.
MARTA leaders said the charging decision followed both a criminal investigation and an internal review by the agency. Chief Scott Kreher said in a statement that the department was saddened by the crash but also had a duty to protect the public while doing police work. He said emergency lights and sirens do not give officers unlimited authority on the road. That point goes to the heart of the case. Georgia law gives emergency drivers some privileges, but those privileges generally do not erase the duty to slow, yield and drive with due regard for the safety of others. Investigators have not said whether the other driver in the intersection will face any citation or whether speed estimates from the patrol vehicle have been calculated and placed in the court file. Authorities also have not publicly described the condition of the injured passenger and officers beyond saying they were taken to a hospital after the wreck.
The case has also revived scrutiny of Alexander’s earlier disciplinary record, though his lawyer says that history should not be used to judge the February crash. Records cited by local reporters show the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council had placed Alexander on probation more than once before he joined MARTA again in 2022. In 2019, he was reportedly stopped while driving 147 mph in his personal vehicle. In 2021, records show he was arrested on a loitering charge at a street racing event. His certification was placed on probation again in 2022, a status that local reports said was due to expire later this year. MARTA officials have said that after he was rehired in 2022, Alexander had no known disciplinary or traffic violations with the agency until the Feb. 2 crash. Even so, the existence of that earlier record is likely to become part of the wider public debate over hiring, retention and oversight inside police agencies.
For MARTA, the crash lands at a sensitive time. The transit system operates trains, buses and police patrols across Atlanta and nearby counties, and its officers work in crowded stations, busy streets and dense downtown traffic where small driving errors can quickly become deadly. North Avenue Station sits in a heavily traveled part of Midtown, near office towers, apartments, Georgia Tech and some of the city’s busiest pedestrian routes. On a Sunday afternoon, the streets around North Avenue and Peachtree can carry a mix of drivers, riders and people on foot moving between stations, restaurants and nearby attractions. That setting has shaped the public response. The death of a pedestrian in the middle of an emergency police response has raised the same basic questions seen in other cities after fatal crashes involving officers: how much urgency the call required, whether safer routes or slower approaches were possible and what standards departments should apply when officers enter crowded intersections against red lights.
The legal case is still in its early stages. Alexander surrendered Wednesday, and his lawyer said bond had already been arranged. Local television reports said he was released from jail not long after he was processed. No public court hearing date had been widely announced by Thursday, and the Atlanta Police Department said it was continuing to investigate the crash. That means more records could still emerge, including body camera footage, dash camera video, radio traffic, dispatch logs, crash reconstruction findings and any surveillance footage from nearby intersections or businesses. Prosecutors will also have to show why the officer’s driving crossed the line from an emergency response into criminal conduct. The defense, on the other hand, is expected to argue that Alexander was answering a call for help, had his emergency equipment activated and was caught in a chain reaction involving another vehicle. Whether the case ends in indictment, plea negotiations or trial may depend on what the video and reconstruction evidence show about speed, braking, visibility and right of way.
The human loss in the case has remained at the center even as the legal questions have grown more complex. Bush, identified by local reports as the pedestrian killed in the crash, was 72. Officials have released only limited details about him, and there has been no extended public statement from his family in the initial wave of coverage. The scene described by investigators was chaotic: a police response to an arrest call, a collision at a major Midtown crossing, multiple injured people and a pedestrian who later died at the hospital. For MARTA officers and supervisors, the case is likely to remain a lasting test of department policy and command judgment. For Bush’s family, the case now moves from the shock of a sudden death into the slow and public process of criminal court.
As of Thursday, Alexander had been fired, charged and released on bond, while Atlanta police continued their investigation. The next key milestone is likely to be his first court appearance or any public release of crash records that shows exactly what happened in the final seconds before impact.
Author note: Last updated March 19, 2026.