Trespassing, assault with a deadly weapon, false arrest, burglary, etc. Oh, the new owners are black? Well then, never mind. The neighbors would have been entitled to shoot them per the “stand your ground and shoot law-abiding black people” laws.
That is sarcastic in case ya didn’t notice.
It’s not quite “breaking and redecorating” but it’s close.
Through the sarcasm, though, you’re hitting the salient point. What gives a person the right to invade private property, armed, to confront an alleged criminal?
Presumably they did not see a human being in imminent danger of serious bodily harm, so what conceivable excuse do they have for this? I don’t have a right to charge into *someone else’s *house with a gun to stop a property crime.
That’s going to depend on local laws. In many jurisdictions, it’s illegal to attempt a citizen’s arrest if it turns out no actual crime has occurred. The intent is to hold people liable if they go around “arresting” people on crimes that only exist in their imagination.
This case would be a good example of that. The neighbours didn’t know the house was vacant - they only thought the house was vacant. In reality, the house was owned by the Kalonjis.
This is why when I recently got my home (in a great deal 
) I:
Made sure I got to know and get friendly with at least one future neighbor.
Insisted to the real state agent to be present to open the door and then let us change the locks.
I remember my real state agent wondered why she had to be present, thing is, as a minority in a place like Arizona, an ounce of prevention (even if it sounds like paranoia to non-minorities) can save you a ton of grief.
Or as a friend of mine once said, “An ounce of prevention can save you an ounce of lead.”
This issue is something in the United States that would vary considerably from one jurisdiction to another. The laws on citizen’s arrests and the consequences for the citizen if the arrestee ends up not having committed a crime are very different from one place to another.
Many States you can’t effect a citizen’s arrest unless you have probable cause to suspect a felony has been committed, but some places permit it to stop misdemeanors.
Just as an example, in Oklahoma you can effect a citizen’s arrest for any crime and detain someone for law enforcement. You can do this if you witness a crime or even if you just have reason to suspect a crime. You can also form a citizen’s posse, you can also break into a home while in hot pursuit. Interestingly though in Oklahoma, the concealed carry firearm laws say that you can only use your firearm in self-defense, so you can do all the above but not with a gun, as you’d be in violation of Oklahoma firearms laws. In Oklahoma the penalties for fucking up a citizen’s arrest can be both civil and criminal.
In other States you can only effect a citizen’s arrest if you’ve directly witnessed the crime, there are limits on whether you can follow in hot pursuit, there are also limits on what crimes you can detain someone for (almost every state allows a CA for felonies, excepting North Carolina.)
Well other than trespassing on the Kalonjis’ property, and holding them captive at gunpoint in their own home.
I remember a conversation I had at work one time where a bunch of us were talking about long road trips and how many hours and miles we would drive in a typical day. One of my co-workers, who was black, was talking about a time he had driven across the United States and he made some casual remark about how he included an extra day in the time he planned for the trip. One of us asked why. He said that he had to take into account the amount of time he’d spend being stopped by the police while he was driving.
I missed this one and I have to reply with my experience, the closing company sold the loan to the bank later, so there was no bank to call yet. The incident took place at dusk or when it was getting dark, usually when the closing company is, well, closed for the day. 
Not sure how the rules are in your area, but there are liability reasons over here and likely in Georgia on why the realtors do not give you the keys to the house; if you had the keys, chances are that it was a new home and not a formerly owned one.
Still, even there the advice is to always change the locks of your new residence and I have to say that realtors just do not want to deal with the expense of driving to the place when supposedly you have a locksmith with you anyhow, “just go and change the locks” was indeed the advise from my realtor, but it may had happened in the OP case that the parents that helped the new home owner decided to save a few bucks and do the locks themselves.
As it turned out, in my case, my father had experience with changing locks and once one is inside the home it is fairly easy to remove and change the locks, but that was possible because I told the realtor after that “just go and change the locks” advise to get their butt over to the new place and to open the door for us.
Even though we had the legal permission to forcibly remove the locks, I rather had my father not to look like someone that was trying to break in.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that seeing people working inside a house is not enough to make a reasonable person believe that a felony is being committed. Even if they thought the house was vacant, did they believe that it would stay that way for the rest of eternity? Surely at some point in time someone would occupy it.
Hey, I bet the neighbors were afraid that these people were going to steal the house! Aye, that’s it! They were going to steal the house, and once it’s gone, you know how hard it can be track down a stolen house! You have to comb the streets talking to all the known house fences… go from pawn store to pawn store, checking address numbers on all the recently pawned houses… you have to call the police and file a missing house report….
Brandishing, maybe? I know someone who was charged with brandishing for pointing a gun at someone who had threatened them first.
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Not necessarily. People do break into empty houses to steal copper pipes or plumbing fixtures.
But as RickJay (and maybe others) pointed out, there was no apparent evidence that anyone’s life was in danger. The neighbours should have done the sensible thing and called the police and then watched events from their own house. It’s when civilians decide they’re Batman and they’re going to fight crime personally that things usually go downhill.
What charges apply to a home invasion? Because that’s what happened here.
I call assault with a deadly weapon and trespassing, at least.
As for why it happened, I’m betting xenophobia, racism, or both. Sigh.
This could be a great defense in a lot of other cases.
“Home invasion? You couldn’t be more wrong! We saw the light on so naturally we broke into the house, tied up the people inside, and held guns on them while we tore out copper pipes and sniffed around for any other valuables to take home… to keep them safe for when the new owners arrived!”
“And I thought they had a gun so I had to shoot them when they attacked me. And you have to believe my claim that they attacked me because I’m the only one involved who’s still alive so nobody can dispute my story.”
What kind of pie?
Didn’t the new owners have their agent’s phone number? Most closing are put into a computer within 24 hours? Did anyone check?