CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A man says he struggled to get an escaped inmate out of his home after she suddenly showed up and told him police were after her.
“Were you frightened,” Channel 2′s Tom Jones asked Elias Munoz. He replied: “Fear. Yes. Scared. Yes. I did. I felt afraid.”
Munoz said he was frightened when 34-year-old Brandi Cannon showed up inside his home Tuesday evening on Thomas Drive in Clayton County. He had no idea who she was or that she had just allegedly escaped from police custody at nearby Southern Regional Hospital.
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Munoz said he told Cannon to get out. “And I struggled with her to get her out of my house.”
He said deputies were hot on her trail and quickly arrived and took her away.
Channel 2 Action News was on a Zoom call when Cannon went before Clayton County Magistrate Court Judge John Parker.
“Can you state your name for me,” Parker asked Cannon, who deputies surrounded.
“Brandi Cannon,” she replied.
Parker read the charges Cannon faces from two separate cases. Those charges came before she was accused of escaping from deputies and then the judge read charges filed against her after the escape.
“The first charge is escape,” Judge Parker told Cannon.
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Deputies believe all of this started after Cannon told officers she had swallowed drugs as she was transported to jail on theft and drug charges. Once at Southern Regional, they say she got out of her hospital bed, slipped out of her handcuffs, and took off. Deputies say before she left she created a chaotic scene.
“When you intentionally used the fire alarm as a diversion to aid in your escape,” Judge Parker said, reading from the warrants.
Deputies say Cannon got about a mile or so away where she tried to break into a car. Then they say she got inside Munoz’s home. He says she asked him to hide her. Munoz refused to go along. “I told her why she came in because she came into my house without permission.”
Cannon is being held without bond at the Clayton County jail. She has a long criminal history dating back to 2013.
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