BY MIKE MORRIS, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A 14-hour incident involving Powder Springs and Cobb County police SWAT teams came to an end early Friday when officers discovered the home they had surrounded was empty.
The incident began about 3:30 p.m. Thursday when a repo man arrived at the home on Misty Bleau Drive to repossess a vehicle, said Powder Springs Police Maj. Mark Weaver.
The car’s owner confronted the repo man with a blue steel handgun and ordered him off his property, which is in the Ashley Woods subdivision off Hopkins Road, Weaver said.
Police were called in and tried unsuccessfully to talk with the homeowner overnight, at one point throwing two cell phones into the home.
Cobb sheriff’s department SWAT team members entered the home at about 5:30 a.m., after firing tear gas and lobbing “flash-bang” grenades into the house.
“The SWAT team has completed the search and there’s no suspect in the residence,” Weaver said. “Obviously when the first units arrived the suspect had already left,” he said.
Weaver said witnesses had told the first arriving officers that the suspect was still inside the split-level home.
Police were searching for the suspect, who they did not identify.