These related cases arise from the events of March 11, 2005, when Brian Nichols escaped Fulton County Sheriff deputies while awaiting trial at the Fulton County Courthouse and later shot and killed David Wilhelm in Wilhelm’s northwest Atlanta home. Appellants were employed as deputies and were named as defendants in a wrongful death suit filed by Candee Wilhelm as David’s surviving spouse and as executrix of his estate. The appeals, which we have consolidated for review, come from the denial of Appellants’ motions for summary judgment: Jerome Dowdell and Chelisa Lee in Case No. A10A0201, Twantta Clerk-Mathis and Grantley White in Case No. A10A0202, and Paul Tamer and Gary Reid in Case No. A10A0203. Because Nichols’s criminal act of shooting David Wilhelm was the superceding proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries, we reverse. Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine issue of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. OCGA § 9-11-56 c. A de novo standard of review applies to an appeal from a grant of summary judgment, and we view the evidence, and all reasonable conclusions and inferences drawn from it, in the light most favorable to the nonmovant.1 So viewed, the record shows that Nichols had been arrested in 2004 for rape, false imprisonment, aggravated assault, and burglary, and he was awaiting trial in Fulton County for those charges in March of 2005. At that time, Dowdell was a sergeant in the Training Division. In February 2005, a church pastor alerted Dowdell that he had learned that Nichols planned to overpower an officer and take the officer’s weapon in order to escape from custody. Based on this information, Dowdell informed a Department detention officer that Nichols might “act out” if the jury returned a verdict against him. Dowdell did not specifically report that Nichols planned to overpower an officer and take a weapon to escape, nor did he himself report the information to his direct superior. The detention officer relayed the information to another officer, who announced at the subsequent morning roll call that Nichols might “act out” if the jury returned a guilty verdict. Present at the roll call was White, who spoke to Dowdell and then relayed certain additional information to Lee, a captain in the Department’s Court Services Section responsible for deployment of officers within the courthouse, and Reid, a lieutenant in the Courtroom Services Section.
On March 9, 2005, an officer searched Nichols and discovered an improvised weapon hidden in Nichols’s shoes. The officer delivered the weapon and a written incident report to Clerk-Mathis, a Lieutenant in the Jail Division who was on duty as the jail watch commander. Clerk-Mathis entered the information in the watch commander’s log book, but she did not inform her captain nor did she order Nichols on “lock down” status or search his cell. At the next morning roll call, the discovery of the weapon was announced.
