A Clayton County jailer who was fired and arrested yesterday by Sheriff Levon Allen has been under investigation by Georgia POST since September 22, 2021 and last year apparently had been demoted from Corrections Officer to jailor at CCSO. Sean Hollinshead’s Georgia POST record also shows that he was involved in an 2014 altercation, during which he shot two people, and that he had moved around both state and county institutions despite two terminations on his record—including from CCSO in 2021.
The Clayton Crescent obtained the documents under the Georgia Open Records Act.
In the 2014 case, Hollinshead was charged with two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. In 2019, a jury found him not guilty on both counts. As a result, Georgia POST’s disciplinary committee took no action.
Hollinshead’s Georgia POST record shows that he had been employed with the Dekalb County Sheriff’s Office at the time of the shooting. According to the POST case summary, on November 28, 2014, Hollinshead took a woman, who the report decribes as “his friend,” to her apartment so she could get her EBT card. Hollinshead waited in the car. When she came back out, her boyfriend followed her, opened the car door, and punched Hollinshead.
“Officer SH retrieved his .45 caliber pistol located between the console and his leg. He chambered a round and fired multiple times. The rounds struck CB [the woman] who was seated in the passenger seat, as well as RJ [the boyfriend], who was outside the vehicle. CB was hit four times, twice in the left thigh, once in the right thigh, and once in the foot. RJ, the intended target, was struck twice in the right thigh. RJ attempted to leave the scene, but was located and treated. CB’s injuries were also not life-threatening.”
Hollinshead’s POST record shows he was first employed as a corrections officer at Coastal State Prison on March 16, 2011, then transferred to Phillips State Prison on April 1, 2012. He voluntarily resigned on October 9, 2013, then went to work at the Dekalb County Sheriff’s Office five days later as a jailor. DKSO terminated him on January 22, 2015; Hollinshead had not reported his arrest in the shooting until December 17, 2014, more than a month after the incident.
Five years later, on April 16, 2020, Hollinshead got his old job as a corrections officer at Phillips State Prison. He voluntarily resigned less than ten months later, then took a job at CCSO as a jailor on February 8, 2021. He was terminated a little over four months later on June 24, 2021, but managed to get a job at the Clayton County Correctional Institute a few weeks later on July 12, 2021 as a corrections officer. That job lasted less than a year—Hollinshead voluntarily resigned on May 27, 2022, then went back to CCSO on May 31, 2022.
Over his career in corrections, Hollinshead completed 571 hours of training, including firearms and de-escalation techniques.
We have asked Allen why Hollinshead was fired, why he was rehired, and why he was allowed to serve in the jail while under POST investigation. We will update with any response.
