A man on the Atlanta Police Department’s Top 10 Most Wanted list is in custody in Jacksonville, Florida, more than three years after the fatal shooting of Republic Lounge owner Michael Gidewon.
Jonathan David Soto, 43, was arrested Tuesday afternoon at an apartment complex on Gate Parkway North. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said its SWAT team tracked him down while working with Atlanta police and the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force.
He did not come out. He did not surrender. When officers surrounded the apartment where he was hiding, Soto refused to leave, and SWAT forced the door open to take him into custody. JSO said no one was hurt.
Soto is the suspect in the killing of Gidewon, 50, one of the owners of Republic Lounge, the West Midtown nightclub at 990 Brady Avenue NW. Police were called to the club at 6:48 a.m. on February 4, 2023, and found Gidewon unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the head. He died at the scene.
According to police, a man was escorted out of the club that night after an argument and because he was intoxicated. Investigators say that same man came back with a gun and shot Gidewon outside. Employees told WSB-TV at the time that Gidewon was the one who put Soto out, and that Soto waited outside for him to leave.
Republic Lounge closed permanently after the shooting, posting a farewell on social media that marked the club’s run from 2019 to 2023.
Gidewon’s family pushed hard to find him. Days after the shooting, his brother Alex Gidewon offered a $100,000 reward on Instagram to whoever turned Soto in, then raised it to $250,000 about a month later. At a vigil, close friends publicly begged Soto to turn himself in. Instead, he stayed on the run for more than three and a half years.
Soto was booked into the Duval County Jail, where he is being held on a fugitive warrant. That warrant allows Florida to hold someone wanted on charges in another state until he can be sent back. Authorities have not said when Soto will be extradited to Fulton County to face the case in Atlanta, and they have not released details on the technology investigators used to track him to Jacksonville. It is also not known whether the reward offered by Gidewon’s family will be paid out.
