A man armed with a knife barricaded himself in a bedroom at his ex-wife’s apartment and told police officers to kill him.
After more than an hour of talking with him, Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell and several officers were able to de-escalate the situation and escort the man safely from the residence.
According to incident reports from the Eatonton Police Department, a woman called the police shortly after 10 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 22, she said her ex-husband came to her apartment, took the keys to a black Jeep Grand Cherokee she had been driving, which was owned by a family member’s ex-spouse, and left in it.
The woman said her ex-husband, identified as Jammahl Fewquay, also took the keys to her apartment and locked all the doors so she couldn’t get back inside.
Officer Dillon Waldroup responded to the residence in Lawson Homes Apartments. After speaking to the woman, he checked Fewquay via the Georgia Crime Information Center.
There, he learned that Fewquay had active arrest warrants out of Dekalb County and was considered “potentially armed and dangerous,” Waldroup wrote in his report.
Waldroup searched for Fewquay in the area. While he was out, he received a call asking him to return to the Lawson Drive apartment. The woman reportedly told him she had also left the area. When she returned, Fewquay was inside the Jeep.
She said when she was calling the police again, Fewquay left again, and this time, he was wielding a large kitchen knife. She noted that he had also broken the windshield wiper control switch and the console lid inside the Jeep.
Waldroup resumed searching for Fewquay and was again called back to the residence because he had returned and was inside the apartment. EPD Sgt. Eli James, Officer Jeremy McClure, and Officer Nathaniel Crooks were there to assist. Once they were inside, Crooks looked into a children’s bedroom and saw Fewquay hiding underneath a bunk bed.
“He is then commanded to get out from under the bed, and when he does, Crooks sees a knife with a blue handle in his hand and tells him to drop it,” Waldroup reported. “Fewquay does not drop it and says that he will die tonight.”
Fewquay reportedly continued keeping the knife after repeated commands from all three officers to drop it, so Sgt. James tased him.
When that didn’t work, McClure also used his taser, which only resulted in Fewquay closing and locking the bedroom door and pushing the bunk bed in front of it to block it from being opened. The officers watched at the door and window to ensure Fewquay did not escape while they called in deputy reinforcements from the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and Chief Cardwell.
When he arrived and tried unsuccessfully to talk to Fewquay through the locked door, Cardwell had Waldroup kick open the bedroom door, and he and deputies pushed the bunk bed out of the way.
As Cardwell entered the bedroom, he saw the butcher knife in Fewquay’s right hand as Fewquay retreated into the closet.
“Mr. Fewquay then became very irate and kept telling me to kill him, that he just wanted to die, but I tried to de-escalate the situation by talking to Mr. Fewquay,” Cardwell wrote in his report. “This conversation lasted 45 minutes to an hour, and every time I thought he was calming down, he started back begging me to kill him.”
As Cardwell continued to listen to Fewquay and converse with him, he said Fewquay finally calmed down enough so Cardwell could safely take the knife from him. He was placed under arrest and escorted from the residence.
Jammahl Joel Fewquay, 30, of Stone Mountain, was taken to Putnam County Jail and charged with one count of criminal damage to property in the second degree, one count of misdemeanor theft by taking, and three counts of misdemeanor willful obstruction of law enforcement officers.