Brandon English/CL File

Protesters on March 11 rallied in downtown Decatur over the police killing of Anthony Hill.

Bridget Anderson was planning to celebrate her three-year anniversary with her boyfriend, Anthony Hill, after work on the evening of March 9. As she drove home from work that afternoon, she received a call from his roommate who was in tears.

Hill, a 27-year-old African-American U.S. Air Force veteran who suffered from bipolar disorder, earlier that afternoon had been shot and killed by a white law enforcement officer. His incident was one of many high-profile police-involved shootings that have followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., last August.

But Anderson considers Hill's death "the most blatant case of excessive force" she's ever seen. That's because he was crawling naked around his apartment complex in Chamblee, knocking on his neighbors' doors, and at one point hanging from a balcony. Despite Hill later being found unarmed, DeKalb Officer Robert Olsen resorted to using his pistol despite having a taser and pepper spray on his belt.

"Anthony was a very good kid," she says. "He had no criminal record. He loved children. He loved singing. He was a very friendly and sociable person. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He actually would take spiders out of my apartment and set them free. I’ve never met anyone like that in my entire life who cared about people so much."

Hill left the military in 2013. Anderson says he struggled in his transition back to civilian life, partially because he failed to receive enough support leading up to his killing. One month after Hill was shot and killed, Anderson hopes that his death will lead to major reforms in how the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs takes care of veterans returning home from combat. In addition, she wants police officers to be better trained in dealing with people living with mental health illnesses.

Hill was unsuccessful in attempts to find steady work after serving in Afghanistan. According to Anderson, the V.A. was supposed to have case workers assigned to check up on him, but he received little assistance aside from a two-day resume class. He should have had a case worker who was more involved with helping him get his life back on track, she says.

"The transition from military life to civilian life is a huge change," she says. "For somebody like Anthony, the V.A. needed to make sure the people who served our country are checked up on and getting the help they need because they risked their lives on the front lines."

His job search after being discharged from the military was also hamstrung by social anxiety and bipolar disorder. When Hill tried to get medical help to stabilize his mood, Anderson says the V.A. tried scheduling him for appointments in Charleston, S.C., and Texas despite the fact he had updated his records. Last January, he was also forced to wait on the phone for two and a half hours to obtain basic information and initially received poor treatment at the Atlanta V.A. Medical Center.

Anderson says that Hill had smoked marijuana multiple times a week to help his mood and was able to start taking bipolar medication last January. But Hill, who was an aspiring singer hoping to sign a record deal, experienced side effects that included a locked jaw and a swollen tongue. She says those side effects prompted Hill to stop taking his medication about 10 days before he died. Hill had a follow-up appointment scheduled with his doctor for March 18, nine days after he was shot and killed, she says.

"He was going to tell his doctor to switch his medicine," Anderson says. "He never got to do that. When he was on the medicine, he was smoking more because the side effects were worse. He was like, 'I don’t want to wake up one day and not be able to breathe because of what this medicine is doing this to me. He decided to stop taking the medicine and use marijuana to help him sleep, to help his brain function better."

Atlanta V.A. Medical Center spokesman Greg Kendall declined to comment on specific details about Hill's medical treatment, citing privacy concerns. He says the V.A. facility offers "a wide range of mental health services to all veterans seeking assistance" such as primary care and specialized programs for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment. The facility also offers a psychiatric emergency department that's open at all hours and a crisis line to speak with mental-health professionals.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the Hill family during this very difficult time," Kendall said in a statement.

Hill, thought to be in the middle of a bipolar episode when he was killed, was gunned down by a veteran officer who had received limited training on how to work with people suffering from mental-health conditions. Olsen, who was placed on administrative leave pending the investigation's outcome, had no serious discipline issues on his seven-year record. According to his police file, Olsen had completed 40 hours of Crisis Intervention Team training in 2009 that included instruction on how to respond to people whose behavior might be affected by mental illness. He received one more hour of mental illness training in 2011.

DeKalb County Police spokeswoman Mekka Parish declined to comment on the Hill case. But Parish says new recruits have received four hours of mental-health training, plus one hour of additional officer training every three years. Not all are required to take the CIT training. She says the department now plans "to be even more proactive" by increasing officer training to two hours each year. And starting with DeKalb's next class of new officers, the department will mandate all recruits complete the 40-hour CIT training. All current officers who haven't taken the course will be required to do so, she says.

Yet Anderson says DeKalb Police should have required Olsen and officers to receive even more additional training. According to Anderson, DeKalb officers should be required to take comprehensive mental-health training at least once every six months. If that didn't happen, she says DeKalb could follow the San Antonio Police Department's example and establish a mental-health detail that specializes in responding to incidents like the one that took Hill's life.

"Hill wasn’t hurting anyone, he was knocking on doors, jumping off a balcony, he wasn’t running toward anyone, people were five feet away from him telling him to get inside. He was out it," Anderson says. "For an officer not to see that is crazy to me. It’s common sense for anyone. A child could’ve seen that. It makes me angry."

DeKalb Police Chief Cedric Alexander has asked for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to launch an independent probe into Hill's killing and all other shootings involving his department's officers. GBI Director Vernon Keenan this week stated that the agency, which has taken on numerous investigations into police-involved shootings in metro Atlanta, needs more resources to continue doing such work.

Anderson, who's had her life turned upside down, would like to see justice served for Hill's in the form of an indictment or even jail time. If that doesn't happen, she hopes that his death will change government policies that save the lives of others.

"I don’t hate Officer Olsen, but there should be some kind of penalty for him," Anderson says. "I tried to forgive him in my heart. It’s a hard thing to do because he took away the love of my life. Our future was broken. We had plans. We wanted to have children and get married."