A former Coweta County Sheriff's Office deputy who once served as the school resource officer at Smokey Road Middle School turned himself in at the Coweta County Jail this week after a grand jury indicted him on multiple felony child sex charges. Mike McGuffey, who spent more than three decades with the sheriff's office across two separate tenures, is accused of taking a girl younger than 16 to a gas station parking lot and a wooded area for sexual purposes, according to authorities.
The Coweta County grand jury indicted McGuffey on three counts of child molestation and two counts of enticing a child for indecent purposes, according to FOX 5 Atlanta, which obtained the indictment. The alleged offenses occurred between August 1, 2019, and March 16, 2020, during the period McGuffey served as Smokey Road Middle School's SRO. A Coweta County Superior Court arrest order, filed Wednesday, directed the sheriff to take McGuffey into custody, and he had not previously been arrested on the charges before the indictment was returned.
McGuffey turned himself in at the Coweta County Jail on Thursday following the indictment, according to WSB-TV Channel 2 - Atlanta. The station reports that the investigation began after the Coweta County Sheriff's Office received an anonymous tip on April 5, 2025, alleging McGuffey had made inappropriate comments to female middle school students and had texted with one of them. The sheriff's office received complaints alleging the inappropriate comments before handing the matter to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which investigated the allegations alongside the sheriff's office.
Resignation Came Weeks After Tip Surfaced
McGuffey was placed on administrative leave the same day the tip came in, and he voluntarily resigned from the Coweta County Sheriff's Office 20 days later, on April 25, 2025, per the WSB-TV account. State employment records maintained by Georgia POST show McGuffey had two separate tenures with the agency, serving from 1993 to 2010 and returning in 2013 before stepping down as a sergeant in April 2025, according to 11Alive. That timeline places his resignation more than a year before the grand jury's indictment this week.
McGuffey's public profile in Coweta County extended well beyond patrol work. Official materials from Smokey Road Middle School list him as the faculty advisor for a student club designed to connect youth with local law enforcement and emergency services. In April 2020, local outlets highlighted him in a community story after he delivered free lunches to homebound students during pandemic-era school closures, a role that underscored how integrated he was in school outreach at the time.
Felony Charges Carry Decades-Long Sentences
Under Georgia Code § 16-6-5, a conviction for enticing a child for indecent purposes is a felony punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison. Separately, Georgia law under O.C.G.A. § 42-1-12 mandates lifetime registration on the state's sex offender registry for felony convictions involving child molestation or enticing a child for indecent purposes. McGuffey is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court, and the charges remain allegations at this stage of the case.
The indictment lands amid a broader stretch of scrutiny for the Coweta County Sheriff's Office. Three agency employees resigned earlier this month following an internal audit into alleged misuse of Flock license-plate reader technology, a matter that triggered a separate GBI review, as CBS News reported. Hoodline has previously covered that Flock camera fallout at the sheriff's office.
Part Of A Wider Pattern In Coweta Schools
McGuffey's case follows other recent misconduct allegations tied to Coweta County school personnel. In May, an East Coweta High School teacher was placed on administrative leave and charged with indecent exposure after student reports to school administrators, a case Hoodline detailed in its earlier report on the indecent exposure charge against the teacher. Separately, Coweta County Superior Court has been the site of other recent child molestation prosecutions, including the case of a decorated Marine who was found dead in the Coweta County Jail earlier this week while awaiting his own molestation trial.
FOX 5 Atlanta reports that it plans to provide additional coverage of the McGuffey case on Fox Local and its website as the prosecution moves forward. It remains unknown whether additional victims exist or whether the Coweta County School System has reviewed its reporting protocols since McGuffey's 2025 resignation, questions that have not yet been addressed publicly by officials.
