We’ve all done it. In a rush to get out the door, we sometimes forget the one thing we just can’t live without: Our cellphone.
The same thing happened to a man who police say was caught burglarizing a Cobb County house. When Braxton Marcus Johnson realized he’d been caught, according to police, he ran from the home, realizing moments later he’d dropped his phone.
Johnson knew what he had to do.
He knocked on the front door and asked for his phone back, the homeowner told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.
By then, homeowner Narges Karobi had gotten a call at work from her mother reporting the encounter. Karobi’s mother had stopped by the house that Jan. 22 afternoon to pick up her daughter’s laundry. When the burglary suspect asked for his cell phone back, Karobi’s mother, who does not speak English, put her daughter on the phone with the strange man.
“Can you tell your mom to give me my phone?” Karobi said the man asked her.
No way, Karobi said, along with some expletives she decided not to repeat to a newspaper reporter.
“Who are you, and why are you in my house?” Karobi said she asked.
The man didn’t have a good explanation.
“He was a nice thief,” Karobi said. “He didn’t push them or yell at them.”
When he returned to the house for his phone, Smyrna officers were already in route. Police arrived in time to see Johnson running from the area, but could not locate him, Officer Christopher Graeff with Smyrna police said.
It wasn’t hard to identify Johnson as the suspect, thanks to the cell phone, Graeff said. On Monday, an arrest warrant was issued for Johnson, charging him with first-degree burglary and obstruction.
Johnson remained on the loose Friday afternoon, according to police.
But without his cell phone, he was unavailable for comment.
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