An Augusta man filed a complaint Monday against a Richmond County Sheriff’s Deputy after an incident Saturday following a child’s birthday party.
Keith Smith said that the deputy, identified as Austin Birch, rushed him and held him at gunpoint as he and his family were leaving a local restaurant. He was also removed from his vehicle and handcuffed prior to being questioned.
“I’ll never know how close he came to shooting me. It was scary,” said Smith, who has worked as a supervisor with Augusta Utilities for seven years.
Smith, his girlfriend Victoria Middleton and her family on Saturday, Sept. 25 at the Top Crab restaurant on Augusta West Parkway. The family had gathered to celebrate Middleton’s niece’s 11th birthday.
Video of the birthday party shows the family singing, “Happy Birthday” and the kids laughing.
As the group was leaving the restaurant around 9:30 p.m., Middleton says they all noticed that several police officers were milling about the parking lot as one officer walked past them.
According to Smith, as he was saying his farewells and getting into his truck, an officer rushed up to his vehicle with his gun drawn, yelling, “Where is the gun? Where is the gun?”
Video taken by the family shows Smith being hauled out of the vehicle and handcuffed in front of the family and children.
Smith says that he is a registered gun owner but that he did not take his firearm into the restaurant. He left it safely secured in his locked vehicle. Smith had no idea why the police would suddenly swarm him, pull a gun and handcuff him, he said.
After the fact, Middleton says officers told her they were called to the location on a report of a suspiciously acting black male roaming the parking lot. The man was reportedly carrying a gun, wearing a red shirt as well as a bullet-proof vest.
Smith is black, and he was wearing a red T-shirt, but Middleton says that her boyfriend was in no way acting suspicious and that the cops should have realized immediately that he was not wearing a Kevlar vest. Such a vest would be easily noticeable even if worn under a shirt.
In the video, the deputy said that they got a call saying there was someone with a gun in the restaurant, yet the officers never went into the restaurant.
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The cops added insult to injury by threatening to arrest him for disorderly conduct even though they knew by then that he was not the suspect they were looking for, Smith said.
“I don’t know how they thought anything was suspicious about Keith hugging everyone goodnight. None of it made any sense,” she said. “We were all laughing and hugging one minute and then scared for our lives the next.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to drag race into this, but I don’t believe (Birch) would have drawn his gun on me if I were white,” Smith said.
Smith says that when they uncuffed him, he became emotional and confronted Birch, demanding to know why he pulled his service weapon on him for no reason.
“I want to go home to my family tonight,” Birch responded, according to Smith.
“What about my family? You nearly shot me in front of my family,” Smith said he told Birch.
Smith said that Birch told him that if he didn’t calm down, he would arrest him for disorderly conduct.
Both Middleton and Smith said they believe race played a part in the episode because Birch and most of the other officers on the scene were white.
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“How crazy is that? You go to a kid’s birthday party and nearly get blown away by the cops just for walking across a parking lot, and they still want to take you to jail when they know you’ve done nothing wrong,” Smith said.
Middleton says that she counted at least six patrol cars on the scene.
“It was surreal. We walked into a nightmare, and the kids were terrified,” she said.
According to Smith, he filed a complaint against Birch with the sheriff’s department Monday morning. Both Smith and Middleton say that Birch is a loose cannon and should be fired or at least put on permanent desk duty.
According to his LinkedIn account, Birch was hired in June 2019 and completed the police academy in 2020.
“We don’t need a guy like that on the streets with a badge and a gun; he is a danger to the public,” Middleton said.
The Richmond County Sheriff’s Department’s public information officer did not return calls for a comment.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com.
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