Was Dalton blast revenge?

DALTON —- The paths of two long-time Dalton acquaintances erupted violently Friday morning when a family property dispute ended in what investigators are calling a suicide bombing.

Lloyd Sylvester Cantrell, 78, was killed and James H. Phillips, 79, was badly burned by a bomb witnesses said Cantrell threw into the window of Phillips’ law firm, authorities said.

“He was intending to do harm to a great number of people,” said Scott Sweetow, assistant special agent in charge with the Atlanta field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Essentially, what this guy intended to do was to become a suicide bomber.”

Phillips’ family was overwhelmed by the incident.

“It’s kind of weird to be living in Dalton and be the victim of a suicide bomber,” said Phillips’ oldest son, Marc Phillips, of Dalton.

Four people inside the law firm were injured in the blast —- two were not badly hurt and a third was taken to a nearby hospital. Phillips was taken to an area hospital before being airlifted to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta where he was listed in critical condition, hospital officials said late Friday.

Marc Phillips said he saw his father briefly before he was taken to Augusta. “He looked like someone you see in Beirut when a bomb goes off,” Marc Phillips said of his father, holding back tears. “He said he felt bad for [Cantrell]. That’s just the kind of person he is.”

The two men had known each other since the ’60s when Cantrell had helped to build James Phillips’ Calhoun farm home, Marc Phillips said. The attorney still lives there.

Cantrell was known around town for wearing bib overalls and carrying a small Chihuahua. Over the years, Cantrell amassed several parcels of land in the area, and gave some of the property to his son.

His son had grown fearful of his father, though, and filed a lawsuit seeking to keep his dad off the property the son had been given, claiming the elder man stole tools, kicked down a door and was suicidal.

Authorities said it was too early to talk about a motive in the case, but the dispute between the father and son was well-documented in court records.

Although it appeared the elder Cantrell had built an explosive device, Sweetow said, a search Friday evening of his house in the nearby town of Varnell turned up little. “It would not be right to characterize it as a bomb factory,” he said.

Regarding the bomb, he said, “This isn’t something you have to work on for months and months,” but it wasn’t something that could be put together at the spur of the moment, either.

Phillips was described by many as a pillar of the community. He was said to have been representing Cantrell’s son.

“He’s an exceptionally good guy,” said Gordon Morehouse, who has an accounting firm near the law offices. “A real fixture in Dalton.”

But Phillips and Cantrell faced off Friday morning in front of the law offices at 411 West Crawford Street.

Police were called to the law offices around 10 a.m., because of an argument between Phillips and Cantrell, Bruce Frazier, Dalton police public information officer, said.

Marc Phillips said his father tried to intercede with Cantrell.

“He tried to talk the fella out of it,” Marc Phillips said of his father’s confrontation. “I don’t think he realized quite the extent of the danger.”

Cantrell’s SUV was later found packed with canisters of propane, natural gas and gasoline. Witnesses said after his attempts to drive the SUV into the brick building failed, he got out and walked behind the building.

Officers arrived in time to see an explosion in the back of the brick building, Frazier said. Authorities think Cantrell got out of his truck and walked to the back of the building, where he threw the explosive through a window or door.

The downtown square was rocked by the explosion that blew the windows out of the colonial-style house that was home to the law offices of McCamy, Phillips, Tuggle and Fordham.

“Things started shaking,” said Morehouse, whose accounting firm felt the force of the blast from two blocks away.

By Friday evening local police, Georgia Bureau of Investigation and FBI agents and ATF agents were using a robot to sift through the law firm building and the SUV Cantrell tried to ram into the building. Had he succeeded, Dalton police said, the damage and injuries could have been much worse.

The investigation at the scene was expected to wrap up by this afternoon, authorities said. The damaged building remained cordoned off Friday night.

Attorney Robert Smalley, a lawyer at the firm, left 15 to 20 minutes before the blast but turned back when he received phone calls about it.

Aside from Phillips, Smalley identified others injured as his assistant, Teresa Stinnett, and two clients. Smalley said Stinnett has a shoulder injury but is going to be OK.

“We’ll take today with our families and try to regroup,” Smalley said. “Our thoughts right now are with the injured and their families.”

Susan Deneise Crowder, who identified herself as Cantrell’s daughter, told the Dalton Daily Citizen that she had been questioned twice by detectives Friday.

Cantrell’s body will be returned to the GBI’s crime lab in Decatur for an autopsy, Frazier said.

The eight-lawyer firm, founded in 1932 specializes in personal injury and wrongful death cases, according to its Web site.

—- Staff researcher Nisa Asokan and The Associated Press contributed to this story

 SHANNON PEAVY / Staff
Map locates Dalton, Ga. Inset map shows area of detail along the Tennessee/Georgia border relative to Atlanta.