A Georgia firefighter was fired after police arrested him for sharing photos of twin brothers found dead on a mountain in Hiawassee, Georgia on March 8.
Atlanta NBC affiliate WXIA 11Alive reports that Scott Kerlin was fired from the Towns County Fire Department on March 14 for violating department protocol.
Kerlin, 42, is charged with misdemeanor obstruction for taking photos of the death scene and sharing the images on social media.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) announced his arrest on Tuesday.
The firefighter did not respond to USA TODAY‘s attempts to contact him on Tuesday.
19-year-old twins Qaadir Malik Lewis and Naazir Rahim Lewis were found shot to death on top of Bell Mountain, a scenic tourist attraction less than 90 miles from their home in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
Hikers found their bodies around 11 a.m. on Saturday, March 8. The GBI said preliminary findings indicate the brothers died by murder-suicide.
A gun was found near the bodies and tested for fingerprints. The bodies were sent to the GBI lab and autopsies were completed. The GBI has not released the results of gunshot residue tests on the brothers’ hands.
The brothers were scheduled to fly to Boston 24 hours earlier to visit with friends, but they never made their flight.
The GBI will review surveillance video from the airport to determine if they arrived or who they may have left the airport with.
The family refuses to accept the murder-suicide theory.
“I couldn’t imagine them hurting each other because I’ve never seen them get into a fistfight before,” their uncle, Rahim Brawner, told KSDK-TV.
“How did they end up out in the mountains? They don’t hike out there, they’ve never been out there,” Brawner said to KSDK. “They don’t know anything about Hiawassee, Georgia. They never even heard of Bell Mountain, so how did they end up right there?”
Bell Mountain is located in rural Towns County, near the North Carolina border, an hour-and-a-half drive from Atlanta.
Lawrenceville, where the brothers lived, is located about 30 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.
