Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
PUTNAM COUNTY, Ga. -- Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills says a homeowner on Thomas Dr. called 911 dispatch around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday about a man armed with a knife up a tree making a disturbance.
Deputies were dispatched to the home, but before they could arrive a second call came in from a next door neighbor alleging the suspect was attempting to break into their home.
The suspect, identified as 28-year-old Hunter Layne Harrison, had picked up a concrete landscaping border brick and threw it through the locked glass door which led to an enclosed porch, according to Sills.
After getting to the porch, Harrison beat on the french glass door to the home, screaming to be let in, but the homeowner shouted back that he was armed and that Harrison needed to leave.
Sills says Harrison picked up a dumbbell on the porch, threw it through the glass door, and made entrance to the home.
But the homeowner, armed with a .45 semi-automatic pistol, shot the suspect once in the arm. Harrison hit the kitchen floor and the owner held him their until deputies arrived.
Once law enforcement made it to the scene, were they sent the homeowner along with his wife and child to wait out the situation in one of the home's bedrooms.
The deputies then attempted to detain Harrison and place him in cuffs, but Sills says the suspect battled with the deputies, splattering blood across the kitchen, breaking free, cussing at the officers, and running towards a door that he believed was an exit.
But Sills says Harrison didn't realize the home was currently under construction and that the door no longer led to a back deck, causing Harrison to fall nine feet to the ground where deputies arrested him.
The officers had to use pepper spray to subdue Harrison and keep his feet in shackles to keep him from running.
While Harrison was en route to an ambulance that had arrived on scene, Sills says he continued to fight deputies. Once inside the ambulance, Harrison was sent to The Medical Center, Navicent Health to be treated for his injuries, including undergoing surgery to remove a bullet from his arm.
Harrison is still at Navicent Health once he is cleared for release he will be transported back to Putnam County for booking.
"These hoodlums make me sick. He's got a twenty-page raps heet and he’s over at the hospital, taking up a bed where someone more important, who might have coronavirus, might need it," Sills said Wednesday.
Sills says he currently has warrants on Harrison to charge him with:
Sills added that at the time of the incident, Harrison was on probation for a 2014 burglary in Putnam County, damaging government property in Putnam County in 2016, and driving on a suspended license and giving a false name to law enforcement in Greene County in 2018.