Cop killer built bombs as a boy – and family warned deputies about him
EVANS, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) - The red flags were there for years before a man opened fire on Columbia County deputies over the weekend – killing one and seriously injuring another.
In fact, James Blake Montgomery had been playing with explosives since he was a child, and he was no stranger to law enforcement.
Deputies stopped him in an RV on Interstate 20 near Belair Road on Saturday evening to serve a temporary protective order.
The order was filed by his estranged wife, who said she feared for her life, and signed by a judge on Thursday.
Once the paper was served and deputies turned to walk away, Montogomery opened fire, Deputy Gavin White with a gunshot to the face.
Deputies had already been warned in an internal memo that Montgomery was mentally unstable and suspected of converting guns to fully automatic operation and building pipe bombs.
The pipe bombs weren’t a new pursuit.
His family tells News 12 that he has made pipe bombs all his life and that it was just something he did as a kid growing up in the country.
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That proved to be a dangerous skill when combined with mental illness.
“Montgomery is a diagnosed bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic, and has been off of his medications for some time,” said a Columbia County Sheriff’s Office memo issued the day before the deadly encounter.
Well before that memo, his family had warned authorities he was dangerous.
When deputies tried to serve divorce papers on Feb 6, Montgomery’s family told them he would shoot officers before they got to his RV.
After the deadly shooting, his family said this:
“We had warned officers and made every attempt to try and help him get better.”
He and his wife had been living apart for up to a year, and he’d been staying in the RV. Authorities said he was moving it from place to place, and that he’d recently been at Elijah Clark State Park.
Investigators say they had been tracking Montgomery’s camper from camp to camp. They believe he was down in Tybee the day before the shooting, had come back, and was leaving to go somewhere again.
On April 15, his estranged wife reported to deputies that she had still been unable to have the divorce papers served because he was living in a camper at an unknown location.
She told deputies she was concerned because he had guns and was acting “very erratic.”
“Mrs. Montgomery stated that Mr. Montgomery has mental issues and she feels like he could become violent towards her or others,” deputies wrote in an incident report. “Mrs. Montgomery stated that she is going to retain an attorney and look into getting a protective order.”
In filing for the protective order, his estranged wife wrote:
“He has threatened that if the police ever show up on our doorstep, what makes me think I would still be around, what makes me think he would allow me to stay on this Earth,” she stated.
A week later, she added that he may burn her home and said he stated “she would be on the news and that the entire country would hear this story.”
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The investigation: Who’s handling it?
- The Regional Force Investigation Team ins handling the case, and it includes Columbia, Burke and Richmond counties.
- The team consists of highly experienced investigators from all three agencies. All who are involved have gone through specialized training and submit t task force reports
- This same unit was used in the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office officer-involved shooting last month
- This was started years ago in the CSRA by the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office
The information about pipe bombs and automatic weapons turned out to be true.
After the encounter with deputies, Montgomery holed up in the RV that remained along I-20, and he was presumed dead.
From drone and robot images, authorities could tell there were bomb-making materials inside, so it took hours before they felt it was safe to enter.
Inside, they found a pipe bomb that had been rigged with a remote detonator, a large amount of ammunition – and underneath it all, several propane tanks.
Also inside the RV was Montgomery’s dead body. Authorities think he may have been killed by two other deputies who returned fire. Or he may have killed himself.
Autopsy results may not be available for a couple of weeks, but they should provide some answers.
As far as the automatic weapons, Montgomery used one of them to shoot the deputies.
And the temporary protective order included a provision that he was supposed to surrender all his weapons.
Past encounters with law enforcement
Montgomery’s name wasn’t unknown to law enforcement in recent years.
Despite being charged with aggravated assault on May 5, 2022, the charge was wiped from his criminal report.
He took first-offender status and the case was disposed on Dec. 16, 2024, with an exoneration.
First-offender status in Georgia allows people with no prior felony convictions to plead guilty and avoid being formally convicted if they complete the program’s requirements.
Although not all incidents were as serious, he’d had other encounters with law enforcement.
And although his felony record was technically clean as of Saturday, there have been several Columbia County Sheriff’s Office incident reports with his name on them.
Four involved 2018 disputes with his ex-wife, mostly over custody trade-offs of their daughter, particularly involving the presence of his girlfriend at the time.
One report involved nonpayment of a bill for boat repair.
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