A man and his son who held two people at gunpoint who they suspected were breaking into a house next door were released from jail Tuesday night. Robert Canoles and his son, Branden, bonded out around 8 p.m. on $8,450 each.
Authorities arrested Canoles and his son late Monday night and charged them with aggravated assault, false imprisonment and criminal trespass.
Before their arrest Monday, Robert Canoles had said he was unconcerned about a second interview with Newton County Sheriff's deputies, who four nights earlier had praised his armed response to a suspected burglary next door.
"What are they going to charge me with?" Canoles told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution before his meeting with the deputies.
He soon got his answer.
The pair had held Jean-Joseph Kalonji, 61, and his 57-year-old wife, Angelica, at gunpoint Thursday evening after spotting the couple fiddling with the lock at the rural Covington home recently purchased by their son.
The Kalonjis tried to tell Canoles they were his new neighbors but couldn't produce documents verifying it. Five deputies responding to the Canoles' call about an alleged break-in arrested the terrified couple.
The Kalonjis urged deputies to call their son. But they never did, opting instead to handcuff the retired couple and charge them with loitering and prowling. The couple told the AJC that they also heard deputies laud Robert Canoles for holding them with semi-automatic rifles.
Those deputies are now the target of an internal review by the sheriff's office, which dropped the charges against the Kalonjis on Monday.
The decision to charge the Canoles followed an investigation that began Friday, said Newton sheriff's spokesman Mark Mitchell. Robert Canoles told the AJC before his arrest that he had been cleared following an interview with officials Friday, but Mitchell said that was incorrect.
"They made the right call this time," said Bruno Kalonji, the couple's son. "There has to be some consequences. I don't think they understood the gravity of the situation until they were arrested."
In his interview with the AJC Monday, the elder Canoles defended his actions, saying the home next door, foreclosed seven months earlier, had been targeted by thieves before.
"Look, this is the country out here, and we protect our own," the 45-year-old U.S. Army veteran said, citing the Second Amendment. "What am I supposed to do when I see a man out there knocking the lock out of a door at 9:30 at night?"
Jean-Joseph Kalonji said he was merely following the advice of the family's real estate agent, who told them after the home's closing they should change the locks on the door. Bruno Kalonji said justice will be complete when the deputies who arrested his parents are sanctioned for their response.
"I have to think if we didn't have [noted criminal defense lawyer] Don Samuel and the media reporting the story, nothing would've been done," the son said.
Bruno Kalonji, now the head women's soccer coach at Georgia Perimeter College, knew Samuel from when he coached the lawyer's son in high school. After learning of the elder Kalonjis' arrests, Samuel offered to represent the family.
Newton County District Attorney Layla Zon, who met with Samuel and the Kalonjis on Monday afternoon, said she could not comment on the case except to say the "appropriate thing has been done in respect to the charges against the Kalonjis being dropped."
About the Author
