A man who barricaded himself in the attic of his house Thursday afternoon and threatened a shoot-out with law enforcement officers is now in jail, and everyone is safe.
Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell and Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said Sparta Highway was closed during the standoff, which ended when they entered the house in a tactical armored vehicle and used a flameless smoke grenade of tear gas.
Multiple law enforcement agencies had active warrants on the man, identified as 26-year-old Tommy Lee Kell. Cardwell said he learned Kell was at his residence on the 200 block of State Route 16, so he, some of his officers, and the probation officer went to arrest around 2 p.m. Thursday, July 11.
“We knew he’d been known to run in the past, so we parked up the road and walked through the woods, and (half of us) went to the back door and (the rest) to the front door,” Cardwell said. “His wife said he went up in the attic and was going to kill the police.”
Cardwell called in reinforcements from the sheriff’s office.
“I responded with the BearCat,” Sills said. “I’ve had it awhile, but it’s the first time we used it. It was a good feeling to pull up at that house and know that no matter what we faced inside, we were not going to be shot.”
They blocked traffic on the highway, cleared the adjacent properties on all sides, and cleared the other house occupants before entering. Eatonton Fire Department was also called in, Cardwell said. Because the smoke grenade used both OC and CS, which disperses smoke but can incinerate, Sills said he didn’t want to throw it in and possibly cause a fire.
“So, I found a 6- to 7-ft. piece of aluminum pipe and duct aped the grenade to it and held the pipe up to the attic instead of throwing it, that way I could control the possible burning components of it,” he said. “Some of the gases came back on me, so I got a worse dose of it than he (Kell) did.”
Kell was transported to Putnam General Hospital, where he refused treatment. Sills was treated with oxygen at the scene, and the other law enforcement officers suffered minor eye and skin irritation, according to Sills and Cardwell.
No gunshots were fired. Officers did not locate the gun inside the attic, “but we didn’t look very long due to the smoke from the smoke bomb,” Cardwell said, and “we did find gun cases but no firearm,” Sills added.
According to Sills, Kell will be charged with multiple counts of obstruction of law enforcement officers and probation violation. The sheriff noted that Putnam already had two outstanding state court probation warrants on Kell, and Newton County had one on him for burglary.
“He has a 30-page rap sheet with 24 prior arrests,” Sills said. “They include arson, fighting in public, theft by taking, criminal trespass, disorderly conduct, statutory rape, burglary, theft by receiving stolen property, possession of methamphetamine, at least 10 counts of obstruction of an officer, crossing guard lines in jail with prohibited stuff, possession of Schedule IV drug, theft by shoplifting, and countless probation violations and failure to appears.”
He added that those arrests were made in Baldwin, Dekalb, Jasper, Newton, and Putnam counties and the Covington Police Department.