When a standoff between a SWAT team and two armed suspects forced him to evacuate his apartment Tuesday, Alex Johnson was alarmed, but not panicked.
That was until he looked at footage from the surveillance cameras in his own apartment and saw the suspects police were searching for walking around his living room.
Kartier Jenkins, 19, and Demontae Thomas, 17, were arrested after witness sightings and Johnson’s live surveillance feed helped police locate and capture them, ending the hourslong standoff.
The incident began about 3:40 p.m. Tuesday when Atlanta officers spotted a Dodge Charger that had been reported stolen. Police tried to pull over the car, but the driver sped away, investigators said.
The car was found in the area of Pine and McAfee streets, but Jenkins and Thomas were no longer inside. Witnesses told police they saw the suspects get out of the car and go into an apartment at a nearby complex. They also noticed the suspects were armed, police said.
About 8:30 p.m., the SWAT team evacuated people living in the units closest to the apartment where the suspects were supposedly hiding. Johnson said his apartment shares a wall with that unit.
“And apparently we also share an attic,” he added.
Credit: Alex Johnson
Credit: Alex Johnson
Johnson said when he heard the SWAT team over a megaphone, he hustled out of his apartment with his hands raised. He had to leave behind his cat, Parley, who was hiding due to the commotion.
For the next two hours, Johnson waited in the stairwell of an adjacent building, watching SWAT negotiators try to coax the suspects out of the unit. When they finally broke down the apartment’s door about 10:15 p.m., they discovered that the suspects were no longer there, Johnson said.
Agents began searching for the two teens and prepared to let residents go back into their homes, Johnson said.
As he waited for the all-clear, Johnson got a notification on his phone that the cameras in his apartment detected motion. Initially, he assumed that Parley had emerged from her hiding spot.
But when he looked at the camera footage, it wasn’t his cat. Instead, he saw two people walking around his home.
“So I went to a SWAT team member and said, ‘I think they are in my apartment now,’” Johnson said. “At first they were like, ‘Do you know these guys? Are you sure they’re not your roommates?’ And I said, ‘Those are definitely not my roommates.’”
Investigators later determined that Thomas and Jenkins had climbed into the shared attic during the negotiations. At some point, they left the attic and dropped through the ceiling of Johnson’s apartment, triggering the cameras.
Johnson said he handed a SWAT agent his phone, and the investigators used it to determine where the suspects were hiding.
“Because of my cameras, they had a live view of where they were,” Johnson said, “so when they went inside, they weren’t going in blind.”
Police surrounded the apartment while watching the suspects through the phone and then went into the unit using both the back and front door. Jenkins and Thomas were found in a bathroom and arrested.
Both were taken to the Fulton County Jail, where they remain on charges of theft by receiving stolen property and possession of a firearm during a felony. Jenkins faces additional charges of reckless driving and fleeing and eluding.
When Johnson was allowed back into his home, he found Parley hiding under his bed. Though they were both shaken, Johnson said he was not hurt during the incident and Parley is “back to normal.”
“The fact that shakes me up is if the SWAT team hadn’t evacuated me, or if I had not had cameras in my apartment, I could have walked right back in there and been in the middle of a hostage situation,” Johnson said.
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