Monday, Oct. 21, could have ended very differently for many families in Atlanta. Thanks to a call from the relatives of 49-year-old Billy Cagle of Cartersville, Georgia—who had posted threats on social media expressing his intent to kill people at the airport—Atlanta law enforcement was able to intervene, preventing a potential mass shooting and arresting Cagle before anyone was harmed.
According to Reuters, Cagle was stopped near one of the airport’s terminals after temporarily parking his car at the airport. This was where police found Cagle near his vehicle with an AR-15 assault rifle and ammunition inside. After police searched the vehicle, they found that Cagle had a total of 27 rounds of ammunition at his disposal. In the family’s report to police, they indicated that Cagle was armed and was headed to the airport.
What the family didn’t know is that he had already arrived at the airport at the time of this call, according to a news conference held by Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport Police Chief Darin Schierbaum. The two officers being heavily credited for the arrest are Sergeant T. Jones and Officer M. Banks. Sergeant Jones was the one who initially notified her team about Cagle’s presence at the airport. Meanwhile, Officer Banks was the one who spotted Cagle in the airport based on the description previously provided to the team of his appearance. Soon after, he was apprehended.
Outside of their proactivity in notifying law officials of what was to come, friends and family of Cagle have also expressed their shock over the situation’s outcome and have noted their awareness of his mental health challenges.
At a press conference following the arrest, Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, addressed the attempted mass shooting, also stating that Cagle was indeed facing mental health challenges and the recent incidents in the Atlanta area and other parts of Georgia, where firearms have come into play, causing safety issues both for those involved and residents. Dickens commemorated the work of the law enforcement team both at the airport and locally, along with Cagle’s family members. These events could lead to more mental health services being implemented in the Atlanta area to prevent similar occurrences in the future. At this time, the city of Atlanta does have mental health services in place locally and federally.
However, according to Atlanta-based health care staffing company, Soliant, Georgia ranks within the bottom 32% of the nation for mental health and happiness. Indicating that additional efforts may be needed to accommodate the need. While it may be easy to point to mental illness as a contributing factor in gun violence, that’s not the full picture. Organizations such as Mental Health America provide evidence that the relationship between firearm-related deaths and mental health conditions is often misunderstood. According to their research, mental illness is more strongly linked to suicide than to homicide. “The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent—95 to 97 percent of homicidal gun violence is not carried out by individuals with a mental illness,” the organization notes on its website.
So, where does this leave us? While it has not yet been revealed what sparked Cagle’s mental health episode or why he chose to target the airport, he remains in Clayton County Jail without bond, awaiting trial. And as a nation, we continue to wrestle with the intersection of mental health, the Second Amendment, and the right to bear arms—debates made louder by the special interest groups that fight to ensure that right is never restricted.
What we do know is that if not for the call from Cagle’s family and the swift action of Atlanta police, this could have been yet another story of lives lost too soon. For that, the hundreds of passengers in Atlanta’s airport that day can be thankful.
But how many more close calls will it take before “thankful” is no longer the best outcome we can hope for?