Johnathan Hamby. Courtesy of Fulton County Sheriff's Office
ATLANTA - The family of the man accused of fatally stabbing 29-year-old Ramon Harris on the Atlanta Beltline has issued an apology to Harris' loved ones and the Atlanta community, saying family members spent years trying to prevent the type of violence that unfolded Sunday.
RELATED: Breaking down Beltline stabbing suspect's criminal history
What they're saying:
The family of 54-year-old Johnathan Hamby provided the statement on the condition that individual family members remain anonymous because of safety and privacy concerns. The family asked that the focus remain on its apology, the victim and proposed changes to Georgia law.
"We want to say directly to the victim's family and to all of Atlanta: we are deeply, unreservedly sorry," the family wrote.
Hamby is accused of stabbing Harris in the neck Sunday afternoon during a confrontation on the Beltline near Ponce de Leon Avenue. According to an arrest warrant, Hamby had been arguing with Harris and another man before the confrontation escalated. Harris died from his injuries.
Family says it tried for years to get help
In its statement, the family says Hamby has a severe mental illness that causes psychosis and claims relatives repeatedly sought greater intervention from the courts.
The family specifically points to Hamby's extensive history with the criminal justice system and asks the same question raised by Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum following Harris' death: Why was someone with such a lengthy criminal history still on the streets?
Records show Hamby had been arrested at least 30 times. In 2020, he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a knife stemming from a 2017 stabbing. He received credit for three years in jail and was sentenced to 17 years on probation. He was still on active probation at the time of Sunday's stabbing, according to police.
The family also claims Hamby previously brought a three-foot samurai-style sword into a Chamblee elementary school because, in his delusional state, he believed he needed to enter the school to charge his cellphone. The family says that incident resulted in a misdemeanor case, a brief jail stay and his eventual release. Those details are assertions made by the family in its statement.
Separately, FOX 5 Atlanta previously learned Hamby was involved in an unrelated aggravated assault case in DeKalb County in 2023. A prosecutor attempted to have his probation revoked, but that effort was unsuccessful.
Family calls for changes to Georgia law
Hamby's family says relatives repeatedly sought a more structured way to intervene in his life but were unable to obtain it under existing law.
The family is now calling on Georgia lawmakers to establish what it describes as a "Family-Led Structured Decision-Making Act." The proposal, as outlined by the family, would create a legal process allowing qualified relatives to assume greater control over certain high-risk decisions for people with severe, treatment-resistant psychiatric illnesses and histories involving weapons or school safety.
The family argues such a system could address issues including access to weapons, housing and compliance with court-ordered treatment.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens raised similar concerns about the broader system following Harris' death, calling on officials to examine how behavioral health, repeat offenders and public safety intersect and to identify failures in those systems.
RELATED: Atlanta mayor demands action after deadly Beltline stabbing
Full statement from the family
The family requested that its statement be published in its entirety and that individual relatives not be identified. The following is the complete letter provided by the family:
To the Atlanta Community, Neighbors, and Leadership,
We are writing this letter with a profound sense of heartbreak, grief, and accountability. Yesterday, a horrific act of violence shattered our community on the Atlanta Beltline. The pain inflicted upon the victim, their family, and every person who witnessed or was impacted by this tragedy is immeasurable. As the family of the suspect, Johnathan Hamby, we want to say directly to the victim’s family and to all of Atlanta: we are deeply, unreservedly sorry.
Our family is trapped in the agonizing reality of knowing that we spent years desperately fighting a broken system to prevent this exact tragedy from happening.
Johnathan lives with a severe mental illness (SMI) that causes active psychosis. In his reality, he is under constant, terrifying attack from bystanders who are simply walking near him. He cannot rationally process the world, nor can he recognize his own illness – a clinical reality known as anosognosia, which affects up to 50% of individuals with severe schizophrenia or bipolar disorders. Because of this, court orders instructing him to simply take his medication or follow rules are impossible for his compromised brain to execute.
The question our community is asking is entirely justified: Why was a convicted felon with 30+ arrest cycles on the street, and why did he have weapons? This is a question our family has been asking for years.
He was on the street because our current legal system relies on a revolving door of short-term incarceration rather than long-term structural intervention. Johnathan has a history of over 30 prior arrests, and a majority of these as individual acts should have served as a high-risk warning to officials. For example, he recently took a three-foot samurai saber into a Chamblee elementary school under the delusional premise that this act was required because he simply needed to charge his cellular phone. The system treated this clear, high-risk warning sign as a standard misdemeanor. He was briefly jailed, released, and put back on the street without stabilized care.
During these prior arrest cycles, our family begged the courts to intervene. We did not ask to strip his humanity away; we asked for a legal mechanism to step in and save him – and the community – from his delusions. We begged the courts to establish a Structured Decision-Making (SDM) plan.
An SDM plan is a framework society already uses successfully to protect individuals with advanced dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. When a medical condition strips a person of their executive functioning, the law allows a willing, accountable family unit to step in and manage high-risk decisions. For Johnathan, an SDM plan would have legally empowered our family to prevent him from purchasing weapons, secure his housing, and enforce treatment compliance before a crisis occurred. Instead, the courts repeatedly dismissed our pleas, citing strict legal thresholds regarding immediate danger.
Johnathan’s case is a tragic symptom of a statewide and national failure. Data from the Treatment Advocacy Center shows that a tiny fraction of individuals with untreated SMI cycle continuously through the justice system – with just 10% of these "super-utilizer" cases accounting for up to 70% of psychiatric emergency and jail intake resources. Our current laws offer only two extremes: brief jail stays that treat psychiatric illness as a crime, or total guardianship, which is incredibly difficult to secure and often resisted by the courts.
We cannot undo the horror of yesterday. But we refuse to let the system continue this broken cycle for other families who are currently begging for help before a tragedy strikes.
We are calling on Georgia lawmakers to introduce and pass legislation establishing a Family-Led Structured Decision-Making Act. This law would create a specific legal pathway in Georgia courts for individuals with severe, treatment-resistant psychiatric illnesses who have a history of weapons or school-safety violations. Georgia can easily implement this framework because the legal foundation already exists. By simply bridging our state's current Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) courts with the Structured Decision-Making blueprints used across the country, Georgia can lead the nation. When a willing, capable family is present, the courts must have the power to mandate an SDM proxy. This allows accountability to be placed where it belongs – in a structured, human-managed plan that controls high-risk variables like weapon acquisition and treatment adherence.
Our family tried to build a dam with our bare hands to protect the community from the tragedy that occurred yesterday, but the system washed it away. We ask our community and our legislators to join us in building a real legal framework that protects the public, empowers desperate families, and prevents another preventable tragedy from destroying innocent lives and shattering our communities again.
We are providing this statement on the condition of anonymity. Please do not attempt to publish our names or contact details. We want the focus to remain strictly on the apology to the victim and his family and the greater Atlanta community, as well as the proposed legislative solution to prevent a similar tragedy in the future.
With deepest sorrow and a commitment to change to prevent a similar future tragedy,
The Hamby Family
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Other Atlanta cases raised similar concerns
Local perspective:
The Beltline stabbing is not the first metro Atlanta case to raise questions about the intersection of serious mental illness, the criminal justice system and public safety.
In 2023, Deion Patterson was accused of killing one woman and wounding four others in a Midtown Atlanta medical building. His mother later told FOX 5 Atlanta that he suffered from mental illness. Patterson was later found incompetent to stand trial before his competency was restored.
In 2021, DeKalb County police shot and killed Matthew Zadok Williams after responding to a report of a man with a knife. His family said he was experiencing a mental health crisis and needed help. Mental health was also a central issue in the 2024 police shooting of veteran John Robert Smith at the Atlanta VA Medical Center in Decatur.
The circumstances of each case are different, but they highlight recurring questions about when and how families, courts, health care providers and law enforcement can intervene.
Atlanta Police recently reported that their department receives and responds to an average of 19 mental health calls per day, which is approximately 6,900 calls per year.
OTHER STORIES
- 'Reason my son is alive': Atlanta mother praises officer shot during crisis
- Jasper VA clinic shooting: Social worker killed following mental health visit
- Coweta shootout victim had mental health history
- Prosecutors ‘drowning’ in mental illness cases
What research shows
Dig deeper:
The relationship between mental illness and crime is complicated, and researchers caution against assuming that a psychiatric disorder makes someone violent.
Much of the research linking psychiatric disorders with crime and the justice system has historically focused on forensic, psychiatric or other specialized populations rather than the general public. Researchers say more population-based research is needed to better understand the connection and guide public policy.
One national study examined data from more than 36,000 U.S. adults, looking at conditions including mood and anxiety disorders, PTSD, schizophrenia or psychosis and substance use disorders, as well as criminal behavior, incarceration and legal problems.
Previous research cited in the study found higher rates of criminal behavior or justice-system involvement among some populations with substance use, psychotic and mood disorders. The risk can also be greater when substance use and mental health disorders occur together.
Data compiled by the Prison Policy Initiative also shows how frequently mental health issues intersect with the criminal justice system.
The organization reports that 43% of people in state prisons and 44% of people in locally run jails have been diagnosed with a mental disorder. Among people jailed three or more times within a year, 27% report having a moderate or serious mental illness.
Treatment can also remain a challenge after incarceration: the group reports that about one-third of people in state prisons with chronic mental illness had received no treatment since admission, while 66% of people in federal prisons surveyed reported receiving no mental health care while incarcerated.