Couple held at gun point & arrested after buying home

A couple in the Atlanta, Georgia area was held at gun point and arrested after buying a new home, The Atlanta Journal reports.

The Newton County Sheriff’s department is investigating why a couple was confronted by neighbors, then arrested and spent a night in jail when they tried to move into a home they purchased.

After closing on a foreclosed home, the Kalonji family were told by their real estate agent they should go over to the house and change the locks.

However, when Jean Kalonji and his wife, Angelica, started working at the home, an armed man and another person who appeared to be the man’s son allegedly confronted them.

“He say to put the hands up and get out from the house, otherwise he would shoot us,” the husband told Channel 2.

The neighbors didn’t believe the couple when they told them they had purchased the home and called the sheriff’s department. The Kalonjis didn’t have closing papers on them, leading deputies to arrest the couple for loitering and prowling, and took them to jail.

Kalonji, who grew up in the Congo, said the experience brought back painful memories.

“There, they put me down with the gun to my head, and come here, the same,” he said.

Mark Mitchell, spokesman for the Newton Sheriff’s Office, said authorities are “looking into it, exactly what occurred, why it occurred.”

The neighbors who confronted the couple declined to make a comment.