5:33 p.m. Wednesday, June 23, 2010

 

Two people were arrested in separate and apparently unrelated incidents Wednesday when they tried to pass through Fulton County courthouse security with handguns. 

The first case involved an Atlanta lawyer who was toting a loaded .380 Sig Sauer in a leather bag. The second involved a woman with a handgun and bullets in her purse as she entered the courthouse to seek a temporary protection order. 

"This is highly unusual," said Tracy Flanagan, a spokeswoman for Fulton Sheriff Ted Jackson. "We are glad that our people are seeing these things when they come through." 

In both cases, courthouse security spotted the guns using scanning machines. 

The lawyer, Kirby Turnage, 74, placed his brown leather bag on the conveyor belt to the scanner Wednesday morning. He later told deputies that he forgot the gun was in the bag, Flanagan said. 

Later, around 2 p.m., Michelle Edwards-Webb, 39, was caught with an unloaded .380 Cobra and seven rounds in her purse, Flanagan said. The Douglasville woman was entering the courthouse to file for a temporary protection order, Flanagan said. 

Each will face the same felony charges, Flanagan said: carrying a concealed weapon, carrying a weapon into a public gathering and carrying a weapon without a license. Neither had a conceal carry permit, she added. 

Turnage is a member in "good standing" with the Georgia Bar Association, according to the organization's Web site. He was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1964. 

Messages left at his Peachtree Street law office and on his cellphone were not returned. Edwards-Webb could not be reached for comment. 

The two incidents mark the second and third time since last month that courthouse security has captured someone trying to bring a handgun into the downtown Atlanta building. 

On May 13, Douglas Fitzgerald, 43, of Cantonment, Fla., was accused of placing a leather bag containing a .44-caliber Magnum with six hollow point bullets into the scanner. 

He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, carrying a deadly weapon and carrying a pistol without a license, and was released from the county jail on an $8,000 bond. 

On June 3, there was another incident involving a man with multiple bladed weapons. 

Reuel D. Channey, 27, was charged with seven counts of bringing a deadly weapon to a public gathering, after he brought a bag into the courthouse loaded with four machetes, an exotic knife and a broken knife he was using to bookmark a Bible, Flanagan said. 

Channey, who remains in jail, reportedly asked a deputy at the security checkpoint to hold his bag while he entered the courthouse to determine whether he had any outstanding warrants. When the deputy refused, Channey put the bag through the scanner. 

Flanagan said Channey would not have faced charges had he left the courthouse instead. 

Courthouse security has been an issue in Fulton since 2005, when Brian Nichols, a suspect in custody, beat a deputy and grabbed her gun. He then killed a judge, a court reporter, another deputy and, later, a federal agent. 

The four arrests came soon after Jackson reopened several courthouse entrances that he had closed. The entrances were reopened after judges complained about long lines at one entry.

 

LINK TO PHOTO OF LAWYER

 http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/two-people-busted-with-555809.html