CARROLL COUNTY, Ga. — A man will spend what is likely the bulk of the rest of his life in jail without the possibility of parole for a 2020 attack on a Carroll County jail officer, in which he took her by the hair and threw her off a second-floor balcony inside the facility.
The district attorney in Carroll County, John H. Cranford Jr., on Friday announced a 55-year prison sentence had been given to 37-year-old Patrick Gentry after a guilty verdict came in earlier this week.
Gentry was an inmate in the Carroll County Jail in January 2020 when he committed the attack, serving time on seven prior felony convictions. Because of those previous convictions, his 55-year sentence in the jail attack could not come with the possibility of parole. He would be 92 years old when he gets out.
In a release, the district attorney said Gentry was convicted of attempted malice murder, aggravated battery and obstruction of an officer.
The attack occurred while a jail officer was searching Gentry's cell "looking for blankets and laundry bags being horded by inmates." When the officer found a laundry bag and began to confiscate it, Gentry snatched it form her, "grabbed her by the hair and clothes, dragged her out of the cell, and threw her under the railing off the second floor balcony."
The DA said Gentry then tried to go run down the stairs, "seemingly the get to the ground floor to continue his assault." He was chased down and stopped by his cellmate.
The jailer fell down into a concrete shower below the second-floor cells and suffered a compression fracture in one of her vertebrae.
"Every member of law enforcement in our community goes to work every day knowing that they are putting themselves in harm’s way to protect and serve our community," the DA said in the release. "It is a debt we cannot repay. However, when a criminal seeks to harm a law enforcement officer, the District Attorney’s Office will do its part to see that criminals like Patrick Gentry receive substantial prison sentences, like 55 years without parole."