A standoff Tuesday afternoon that had the potential to end badly ended with a Clarkesville man under arrest.
Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell says 39-year-old Thomas Jack Benfield of the Batesville area (Clarkesville address) is charged with burglary, 13 counts of theft by taking, fleeing or attempting to elude police, and obstructing or hindering law enforcement officers.
LISTEN: Sheriff Terrell comments on Benfield standoff
Burglary call
Deputies were called to a home on Ga. 197 between Henry Pittman Road and Bobby Brooks Road shortly after 1:30 p.m. Tuesday for a burglary.
“I think the call originally came in as a domestic,” Terrell said. “A young, possibly juvenile, caller had locked themselves in a bathroom because there was a subject there who was acting irate, out of control.
“Upon our arrival, the subject was leaving the residence and we attempted to stop him in a short pursuit, which was very low speed and didn’t go very far,” Terrell said. “He actually went back to his house is where we ended up, back in his driveway.”
Deputies knew Benfield could be armed with one or more weapons.
“He refused to comply to come out of the vehicle,” Terrell said. “The deputy could see weapons in the bed of the truck, and the caller advised that he thought [Benfield] had taken weapons from the house. We had reason to believe he was armed at this point.”
Even after a sheriff’s office sergeant arrived, Benfield refused to comply, so additional sheriff’s office personnel responded.
The sheriff’s office negotiator arrived and moved close enough to try to communicate with Benfield.
“We had eyes on him,” Terrell said. “We had rifles trained on him. We had less than lethal standing by – bean bag rounds, pepper balls, taser, stuff like that.”
Communicating with Benfield during the standoff was not effective.
“After a period of time, which was probably close to a couple of hours, there was no communication,” Terrell said. “He just put his ear pods in or earbuds in his ears and just leaned back and started playing music, which he was singing to, so we knew what he was doing.”
Next moves
After determining that communication with Benfield was not going to work, sheriff’s personnel began planning the next moves.
“We made the decision that we needed to remove him from the truck, so the deputies came up with a plan and it sounded great, so I said, ‘let’s roll with it’ and two approached from the passenger side – which the window was down, and the mirror was missing so he couldn’t see them,” Terrell said. “So, they launched pepper balls into the truck and two more deputies came down the other side and pulled him out of the truck.”
As suspected, Benfield was armed, having two weapons within reach.
“He did have a loaded handgun, which I believe was a .38, tucked right up against his leg,” Terrell said. “Also, he did have a .22 that was loaded that was laying there ready where he could get it out. He was taken into custody without any further incident, and nobody was injured. He wasn’t injured.”
Terrell said pepper balls can shoot a long distance, saying deputies were probably 20 feet from the truck when they launched them.
Peaceful resolution
“The last thing we want to do is take somebody’s life,” Terrell said. “So, if we can work around that and not do it, then that’s what we’re going to try and do. Now, if they produce a firearm then our folks will do what they have to do. But we would like to prevent that if at all possible.”
Terrell said he is thankful the incident ended peacefully.
“Everybody got to go home safe at the end of the day, even the bad guy,” Terrell said. “That was our goal, and it all goes back to [keeping] our folks trained and we have tools for them to use, and we put them to use and everything turn out the way that we had planned.”
Benfield had permission to be in the house but did not have permission to be in the locked room where the firearms were located, which was protected by a padlock, Terrell said.
“We did take him for evaluation,” Terrell said. “We do believe he was under the influence of alcohol.”
