Published: October 16, 2009 11:47 pm      

Witnesses recall day of drama at law firm

Dalton policeman Randy Evans said he thought about going around to the back of the McCamy, Phillips, Tuggle and Fordham law firm on Oct. 17 last year to investigate a disturbance call he’d gotten in his cruiser, but something changed his mind and he began walking to the front door.

After a few steps, a bomb — set off by a man embroiled in a family argument and frustrated by the legal system — rocked Evans and the law firm.

“The only regret was I wish I had my (car) camera on to capture it, because it was awesome — and I mean that in a fearful sense,” said Evans, who is now retired.

Teresa Stinnett is a legal assistant at the firm. She remembers being told by attorney Jim Phillips that Lloyd Cantrell, who caused the blast and eventually died from it, was hitting the law office with his SUV.

“I actually thought it was thunder,” she said. “It was shaking the building.”

She said she dialed 911 to report Cantrell was ramming the building.

Jeff Arp, a senior telecommunicator with Whitfield 911, said the eventful day that unfolded on Crawford Street “started out as a routine disturbance call.”

“She (Stinnett) told us there was an elderly client who was disgruntled, and was arguing with someone about something,” Arp recalled. “Dalton Police was dispatched, and on the way (Cantrell) started ramming the building with a car. That’s not unusual either, we’ve had it happen before.”

Stinnett said she could see the SUV striking the building through the conference room window that faced Crawford Street.

“I saw him get out of the car,” she said, “and told 911 he was getting a container — it was a large, round silver cylinder — and he began banging it on the door.”

Arp said when Stinnett told him Cantrell had a gas can and was headed for the front door, he advised her to get clients and attorneys away from the entrance.

“There were four people gathered with me downstairs — (attorney) Curtis Kleem, (legal assistant) Lisa Taylor and (clients) Ruby Yeargin and her son, Steve,” she said. “Lisa started to go back to her office and I told her to stay with us, that if something happened I wanted us to be together.”

Stinnett said Ruby Yeargin was in the hallway and Phillips was near the library. Steve Yeargin had gone outside to see what was going on, then ran back in to hold the door shut.

“He couldn’t get the door locked because it’s a complicated lock,” she said. “Thank goodness he’s a big guy. Mr. Cantrell banged the cylinder on the door four or five times, but I could tell the can was heavy because he was getting weaker and the last blow was not as heavy.”

Stinnett said she looked out the conference window again and saw Cantrell headed around his SUV toward the back of the building.

Arp remembers Stinnett saying over the phone, “He’s running around the back ... he’s busting the window, he’s busting the window!”

Stinnett said she got the first clear view of the container Cantrell was carrying at the law library window. She saw him take the end of the cylinder and break four square panes of glass — one pane at a time — and then meticulously clean the glass out of the frames with his hands. She could not recall if he was wearing gloves.

“I thought he was going to catch the building on fire, but he lit the end of the container with a lighter and kind of leaned in and threw it and pushed it inside through the frame,” she said. “It exploded and everything went black.”

Arp said he heard “a loud explosion and a crack — the line stayed on, but she was gone. I said, ‘I believe the bomb went off,’ and we sent the (Dalton) fire department.”

He described the dispatch center as on “sort of a heightened alert” as other calls began pouring in.

“We had five or six more calls from area businesses around there, and from people with cell phones, to tell us a bomb had gone off,” he remembered. “But what really hit us was when we found out the car he was trying to use to ram the building was full of gas and explosives.”

Evans said he could tell the blast came from the rear of the building, and ran around back to find Cantrell lying on the ground.

“I believe he was face down,” he said. “I thought he might have something else, and it was obvious he wasn’t going anywhere. I went back around to the front and people were coming out of the building. I was very concerned about the situation, because I thought there could possibly be more people inside. We’re trained not to go in, because you could be risking your life to save no one.”

Stinnett suffered a sprained shoulder when she was hit by flying debris. She had surgery, went back to work, and said it’s “getting better.”

“It’s a year later, and I’m not really sure how I feel,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve given myself time to feel anything — I’ve stayed busy.”

Memories of that day still linger, she admitted.

“It’s the visions I’m going to have to get over when I walk by the library, or look out the (conference room) window,” she said. “And there are still some insecurities when people come in. I hope it never happens again. It was a useless act on the part of Mr. Cantrell.”

Other employees of the law firm who were present when the bomb went off were Sherry Cline, Sandy Babich, Lee Daniel, Mona DeGarmo and Dan Strain.

Capt. Jeffery Dugger with the Dalton Fire Department was doing an “alcohol inspection” downtown for the pre-opening of a bar when he saw smoke and went to the scene after the “radio tone” alarm in his car went off. Dugger said he was the first to walk the perimeter of the house and saw Cantrell on the ground.

“It became more clear it was an explosive by what I was seeing and hearing people say,” he said. “We’re taught to suspect a second device when that’s the case. Our guys were pulling hose lines into place to fight the fire, and I told them to stop (as a precaution). I called in additional personnel.”

Firemen later went inside with a Georgia Bureau of Investigation “bomb tech” and were putting out small fires with handheld water extinguishers, but when the house — a two-story, Victorian-style building — began to burn more rapidly the GBI gave permission to treat it as a structure fire and put it out.

“The big thing that stood out to me was how it got to be national news so quickly,” Dugger recalled. “Fox News, CNN, Headline News, they were all calling the (fire) station, so we got a media station set up at the scene. The mayor and council were there, and that exposed them to what we do. There were other lawyers from other firms who came, too. Everybody came together after the news filtered out so quickly.”

When Evans went to a recent barbecue picnic sponsored by the law firm in appreciation of the first responders, he reflected.

“I had a feeling, like wow, I shouldn’t even be here,” he said. “It seemed like everybody had God on their side that day, except for Mr. Cantrell. If he had done what he wanted to do with that car full of explosives, a lot more people would have been hurt or killed, and it would have hit the school (across the street), too.”

Police and fire department spokesman Bruce Frazier said the emergency response — which included streets being blocked off all day and dozens of first responders and investigators on-site — along with media representatives clamoring for news, made for “a complicated scene.”

Jim Harrison works at Dawnville Grocery and Hardware, and said when store employees found out it was Lloyd Cantrell of the local community, “It blew all our minds.”

“They had some real difficult times,” he said of Cantrell and his children. “You never understand why something like that happens. We just have to trust in the Lord to get us all through it. I’m sad for all of them.”