GCSO deputy & civilian shot in Bridge Creek area

By Jayson Knight

Racheal Zion Clay, 36, is currently being held at the Grady County Jail on a $1,000,000 bond on three charges of Shooting with Intent to Kill after injuring a Grady County deputy and one civilian Friday. Each charge is punishable by life imprisonment.

On August 12, 2022, Lieutenant Gornick, and Sergeant Carpenter, duly sworn and certified peace officers, employed by the Grady County Sheriff’s Office were briefed on a shooting which occurred at 1401 County Street 2960, near the Bridge Creek area in Blanchard.
Lt. Gornick and Sgt. Carpenter spoke with Grady County Deputy Keith Williams and Deputy Booth who were on the scene. The arriving deputies also watched both officers’ body-worn cameras, along with Deputy Williams’ camera in his vehicle, which records the back seat of his patrol unit.
Deputy Keith was dispatched to the address for a welfare check. The male reporting party told dispatch there was a female which he had just met, Rachel Zion Clay, and she keeps saying they have a child together and God is the Mosiah. The reporting party stated Clay wasn’t violent, but was crawling around on her hands and knees in the yard and barking at him and others.
At approximately noon, Deputy Keith and Deputy Goucher arrived on seen. At approximately 1206 hours, Deputy Booth arrived on scene. Once on scene, the deputies made contact with a female who later identified herself as Rachel (Rachael) Zion Clay, the reporting party, and the RP’s son.
The RP’s son told Deputy Williams the female showed up at his residence with his dad a few hours earlier. The RP told Deputy Williams he had just met Rachel the day before, and to his knowledge she had not taken any illegal drug. Both men stated they spoke with one of Clay’s friends the night before, and her friend said she is supposed to be taking medication for mental illness, but she is out of the medicine. The men said they tried to get Clay to agree to go get more medicine, but she refused.
On Deputy Booth’s body worn camera you can see and hear Rachel yelling, saying she was god and was saying things which did not make any sense.
When the deputies tried to talk with Rachel and get her to calm down, Rachel continued to yell nonverbal words and would not cooperate with the deputies. Rachel appeared very agitated. Rachel did identify herself as Rachel Zion Clay,
but would not give the deputies her date of birth and was saying things like ‘answer the phone,’ ‘you let her die,’ ‘I’m not human,’ ‘you killed her,’ and also talked about a child needing a blood transfusion.
At approximately 1221 hours, Deputy Keith and Deputy Booth placed Rachel in protective custody and handcuffed Rachel’s hands behind her back.
She was then placed into the back passenger seat of Deputy Keith’s patrol vehicle, with the seatbelt secured. During this time, Clay continued to yell and would not cooperate with the deputies’ instructions.
At approximately the 1223 hours, Deputy Keith, Deputy Booth, Dale and Joseph are standing near each other approximately 29′ 3.75″ behind and to the north of Deputy Keith’s patrol vehicle by a tree, according to Sgt. Carpenter’s report.
On Deputy Williams’ secondary back seat video, Clay can be seen being placed into the patrol unit.
Shortly after, while the deputies spoke with the reporting party, Clay can be seen taking off her seatbelt. For the next few minutes, Clay can be seen trying to remove the handcuffs from her wrists.
Clay slipped the handcuff off of her right wrist and immediately reached through the Plexiglas partition window and separated the front of Deputy Keith’s patrol unit and the back seat.
Then, Clay can be seen pulling a patrol rifle through the sliding window of the Plexiglas.
This rifle was magazine loaded with 20-.223 soft point bullets. Clay can be seen messing with the rifle, then turns and looks where the deputies and the RP are standing, points the rifle at them, but does not fire.
In the back seat video, the dust cover on the rifle, at this point, is still in the locked and closed/up
position. Clay then brings the rifle back down to her lap and can be seen messing with and manipulating it.
Clay then pointed the muzzle of the rifle against the glass and fired ten shots at the three men, hitting Deputy Williams in the head and the RP party in the chest.
Rachel remained in the back seat of the patrol unit with the loaded patrol rife, and refused to exit the vehicle. Clay was able to reach into the front seat of the patrol unit, get paper and items to write on, and wrote several notes stating there were bombs under the seat, ‘ambush ambush’, ‘I killed one’, ‘evac the city’, ‘kill any cop that trys to approach,’ ‘not human, not human,’ ‘call the penttongon’ and many more.
After approximately 3 hours and 28 minutes of negotiating with Clay, the suspect exited the patrol unit and was taken into custody.
She was transported to the Grady County Jail by Deputy Meador, Sergeant Carpenter and Lt. Gornick, who sat in the back seat with Clay during the transport.
Grady County Undersheriff Gary Boggess said Tuesday morning that both Deputy Williams and the civilian were okay. The undersheriff shared a few more details, and already has plans in place to mitigate this kind of contingency moving forward.

“Deputy Williams was bleeding like a stuck pig, but both of them were treated and released from the hospital,” Undersheriff Boggess said. “One round hit a tree and ricocheted off and split the round, so it was one round that got both of them.”

As far as the glass partition the suspect was able to reach through, “I’m fixing that issue,” the undersheriff said. “I’m getting ready to order partitions without that little window and the units that have them, I’m getting ready right now to seal them off. Kicking the glass, I’ve seen that, but what she did, that’s the first in my career I’ve ever seen. Keith left the slider open so she could get some air back there, trying to keep her calm. We released some of the video, and she works about 15 minutes to get out of those cuffs. And then once she did, she was looking up front on his console, and found on his switch box where it said ‘Gun’, she hit it, heard the click, she pulled the rifle out, and then, she spent another probably eight to twelve minutes trying to figure out how to work the gun and all of a sudden she got a round in it off. During the video, as I’m watching it, I’m like, ‘God, check on her. Go check on that car, but he’s dealing with the victims out there now and getting statements like we normally do.”

Clay’s blood tests came back positive for methamphetamine.

“If you ask the people who know, her pain tolerance at that time is really high,” the undersheriff said. “She’s not feeling anything, and that’s how she was able to work on those cuffs like that.”