Officer Devin Brosnan arrived to find 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks asleep behind the wheel in the drive-through lane. Brooks woke, moved his car to a parking space, and fell asleep again. Brosnan roused him a second time and called for a DUI-certified officer. Garrett Rolfe arrived at 10:56 PM and, with Brooks's consent, conducted a pat-down, a field sobriety test, and a breathalyzer. Brooks registered a blood alcohol level of 0.108 percent, above Georgia's 0.08 legal limit. He was relaxed and cooperative, at one point asking to simply leave his car overnight and walk to his sister's house nearby. At 11:23, Rolfe told Brooks he had had too much to drink to drive and moved to handcuff him. In the struggle that followed, Brooks grabbed Brosnan's taser, punched Rolfe, and ran. While fleeing through the parking lot, Brooks turned and fired the taser at Rolfe. Rolfe drew his handgun and shot Brooks twice in the back. Brooks was taken to a hospital, where he died after surgery.

Atlanta was still reeling from weeks of George Floyd protests when Brooks was killed. Demonstrators gathered at the Wendy's within hours. The next night, the restaurant was set ablaze. Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned on June 13, saying she hoped the city could move forward and rebuild trust. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms ordered an overhaul of the department's use-of-force policies. The site became an impromptu memorial, but tension mounted. Armed protesters erected barricades on adjacent streets. On July 4, eight-year-old Secoriea Turner was killed when gunfire struck the car she was riding in near the occupied area, a tragedy that sharpened the grief and anger surrounding the site.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced eleven charges against Rolfe on June 17, 2020, including felony murder, while the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's own inquiry was still underway. The GBI investigation later contradicted several of Howard's claims, finding that Rolfe had rendered timely medical aid and that no witnesses corroborated Howard's assertion that Rolfe said "I got him" after the shooting. Howard, already under a separate GBI investigation for allegedly funneling city funds into his personal accounts, lost his primary election and left office in January 2021. His successor, Fani Willis, asked the state attorney general to take over the case, citing concerns that her predecessor's prosecution may have been politically motivated. A judge eventually disqualified Willis's office, and a special prosecutor was appointed.

On August 23, 2022, Special Prosecutor Pete Skandalakis announced that all charges against both officers had been dropped, concluding that the use of deadly force was "objectively reasonable" and that the officers had not acted with criminal intent. Rolfe had already been reinstated to the Atlanta Police Department with back pay in May 2021 after the city's Civil Service Board found he had been denied due process when he was fired the day after the shooting. The burned Wendy's was demolished. In December 2023, two people pleaded guilty to arson for setting the restaurant ablaze. The city paid Brooks's family a one-million-dollar settlement. What remains is a cleared lot at a south Atlanta intersection, and the memory of a summer night when a routine traffic stop spiraled beyond any resolution the legal system could offer.