Jose Gonzalez, 27, and his accomplice Michael Eller, 28, were very upset after their robbery didn’t go as planned. They thought a bike shop in Orange County, Florida would be a simple target. What they didn’t know was that the owner, Robert Antley, had started sleeping in his store after a string of break-ins was reported in his community.
According to the thieves, Antley caught them breaking in and then held them at gunpoint. Gonzalez and Eller accuse Antley of forcing them to strip down to their underwear and stand before a wall where he beat them and threatened to kill them. After an hour, the robbers were locked in a bathroom. Around that time Antley’s brother Joshua and girlfriend Kathryn Pellicio stopped by the shop. According to Eller, Antley continued the beatings for another hour.
Antley later called 911 from his brother’s cell phone. According to the Palm Beach Post, Antley claims he had been unable to do so earlier because the Eller and Gonzalez had cut the land line and Antley’s cell phone battery was dead. When police arrived, all five people were arrested. Legal analyst Bill Sheaffer commented to the Post about the rights of property owners to defend themselves “You are allowed to engage in conduct that is reasonable, necessary and lawful to protect yourself or your property, but one may argue that these efforts were neither reasonable nor lawful.”