By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

BARNESVILLE—By being present to him and affirming that life is always worth living despite serious hardships, Father Karl Duggan helped to dissuade a man, who had summoned him to hear his last confession, from committing suicide July 15.

According to a July 17 article in The Herald Gazette of Barnesville, the man was in the town’s Giant Mart parking lot for about two hours that Sunday morning, temporarily shutting down businesses as he threatened to end his life with a semiautomatic pistol. He reportedly suffers from a terminal illness.

The 55-year-old man threatened suicide after he was stopped by Barnesville police officer Tommy Middleton at 10:05 a.m. Sheriff Larry Waller and sharpshooters from his office then came to the scene and the man asked the sheriff to summon a priest. Sheriff Waller, who was at the man’s side throughout most of the ordeal, said he never intended to harm anyone but himself. Nevertheless, the doors at Giant Mart and Hardee’s were ordered locked with employees and customers inside.

Father Duggan, 29, who in early August became priest-in-charge of St. Ann’s Mission in Barnesville, had just arrived at 10:45 a.m. from St. John the Baptist Mission in Thomaston, where he’s also priest-in-charge. His second week at the church, he was vested for Mass when an officer asked him to come to the scene. “They were coming into Mass and I was getting hauled off by the police,” he said.

Putting on bulletproof body armor, he spoke with the man for about 30 minutes, after which the man surrendered and gave his gun to Sheriff Waller. Father Duggan said he didn’t share any lofty religious message as the man aimed a gun at himself, but told him “that life is worth living, you’ll get through it, just anything at all to try and get him to get it (the gun) off him.”

“It was just a guy at the end of his tether,” the priest said. “He had had enough of everything.”

Father Duggan, who was ordained in 1998, said he had never experienced a suicide attempt “right there and then,” but that he didn’t have time to feel much anxiety.

“The Holy Spirit takes over at moments like that. It is something you just do and then afterwards you start thinking about it, but it worked out really well.”

The man was taken to the sheriff’s office that afternoon and, after Judge Kathy Martin prepared documents, was taken to West Central Georgia Regional Hospital in Columbus for treatment.

Father Duggan then returned to the church and to parishioners, who had been waiting and praying, where he told them “everything turned out well.”

In the Herald article, the sheriff praised his law enforcement officers for their professionalism.

“A tragedy was averted and we can all be proud of all the officers who handled the potentially deadly incident,” he said.

According to the article, the man had also been upset about the disappearance of a dog he had been caring for while a friend and his family were on vacation. The dog was found that afternoon at the pound.

Father Duggan said Aug. 14 that the man had been released from the hospital. “He’s doing a lot better.”

The two have spoken on the phone and the priest plans to continue talking with him.

Reflecting on the incident, Father Duggan is grateful that the man requested a priest just when he did, because the officer came just after he arrived at St. Ann’s.

“If he had looked for a priest a half hour earlier, I wouldn’t have been there. God works in strange ways.”