Pastor Shot To Death Outside Gas Station By Police

TOCCOA, Ga. -- A pastor in a northeast Georgia community is dead after an investigation into drugs and prostitution. He was killed after officials say he tried to hit an undercover officer with his vehicle outside a convenience store in Toccoa.

The pastor was shot by an officer with a Tri-County drug agency in the parking lot of a Downtown Toccoa Shell station.

According to Stephens County Sheriff Randy Shirley, the officers were following a car that had just left a business they were watching as part of a drug-prostitution investigation. Shirley said that they did not know that Shoal Creek Baptist Church pastor Jonathan Ayres, 28, from Lavonia, was driving that car.

The car pulled into the Shell station, where a surveillance video shows Ayres in the store. The video also shows him leaving and getting back into the car, when he was approached by officers.

The sheriff says the officers clearly identified themselves as police, but the car lurched into reverse, hitting one of the officers. The car then lurched forward. That's when one of the officers fired into the car. The car continued down the street before it ended up hitting a tree.

Ayres died after being taken to a local hospital.

The sheriff said there was a passenger in the car -- a woman that he said was the subject of the drug-prostitution investigation. She has been arrested and charged with selling cocaine -- but not to Ayres, the sheriff said.

The sheriff said the district attorney is looking at additional charges against the woman that could involve charges of prostitution.

11Alive's Kevin Rowson asked the sheriff if the pastor was involved in any illicit activity. The sheriff told him that that was part of the investigation.