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"UVALDA, Ga. (WJCL) - Law enforcement agents spent Tuesday on the side of a Montgomery County road trying to understand how Montgomery County Sheriff Ladson O'Connor lost control.A situation that has some lost for words. \"It's just hard to believe that just  I talked to him and  he's gone,\" Byron Fountain said.Fountain grew-up with O'Connor. A man who he says you could depend on.\"If he told you he was doing something, going to help you whatever, that's what he did,\" Fountain said.O'Connor used this attitude to get him elected as sheriff. He started two and a half years ago.Since then, he not only impressed friends, but neighbors as well.\"He was getting the people with the pills and the meth,\" Montgomery County resident Rhonda Hysmith said. \"Hey, thumbs up on that.\"\"We never had anyone that wanted to clean the town up,\" Fountain said. \"That wanted to get rid of the drug dealers and lock them up.\"O'Conner didn't come from a career in law enforcement. Farmers remember him picking onions in their fields.Later he owned a logging business. Hardworking jobs neighbors say to prepare him well to being sheriff.\"Anybody who goes through the hardships of being raised and know what it is to work, and appreciate what they get, and they know honest, hardworking people,\" Fountain said. \"So that's what he was out to protect was the honest, hardworking people.\"Protection people is what he was doing Tuesday morning when Georgia Bureau of Investigations agents said O'Connor helped with a chase. And sadly friends say his caring and helpful personality is what ended his life.\"That's the way Ladson was,\" Fountain said. \"He didn't expect his deputies to go do it. He was going to be with them and do it.\"We're not sure who will lead the department in the immediate future. Deputies tell us, the department was currently in the process of selecting second in command, prior to O'Connor's death.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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