Dillard, Presiding Judge. Following a jury trial, Edgar Lopez-Lopez was convicted of aggravated assault and possession of a knife during the commission of a felony based on evidence that he stabbed one of his roommates. On appeal, Lopez-Lopez argues the trial court erred by denying his motion to suppress certain incriminating statements he made during a police interview prior to his arrest. For the following reasons, we reverse. Viewed in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict,[1] the record shows that, during the relevant time period, Lopez-Lopez[2] lived in an apartment with the victim, Antonio Erazo, Melvin Erazo (Antonio’s uncle), Lauro (last name unknown), and a family of three—Evelyn Aguilar, Francisco Aguilar, and Catherine Aguilar.[3] On January 1, 2018, Evelyn awoke at approximately 5:30 a.m. to use the bathroom, and when she entered that room, she saw blood stains all over the bathtub. She also noticed bloodstained shoes in the bathtub. At this point, Evelyn called for Francisco, and after he saw the blood, he went into Lopez-Lopez’s bedroom because Lopez-Lopez and some of his roommates often opened beer bottles with a knife. So, at first, Evelyn and Francisco believed someone may have cut themselves while opening a beer. From the hallway, Evelyn could see Lopez-Lopez was asleep on his bed without any cuts or other injuries to his body. Evelyn and Francisco then went into the victim’s bedroom and saw him lying unconscious on the floor. Then, after turning the light on, they found a kitchen knife on the floor near the victim. At this point, after unsuccessfully attempting to call his boss, Francisco called a coworker “because [they] were thinking about taking the victim to the hospital” and needed his help to do so. Eventually, Francisco’s boss and coworker both came to the apartment and went inside. Francisco took the men to the victim’s bedroom, where they lifted his shirt and saw “wound marks . . . filled with blood.” Then, instead of taking him to the hospital, Francisco’s coworker called 911 to report the incident. Detective James Glassman—a “uniformed road officer” with the Gwinnett County Police Department (“GCPD”) —was the first officer on the scene, and two other officers arrived shortly after that. Officer Glassman and the other officers went to the victim’s bedroom and discovered that the victim—who was “surrounded” by blood—had stab wounds to his neck and back.[4] And by this point, everyone other than the victim and Lopez-Lopez had exited the house and gone outside. Evan Nelson—who was also a police officer with the GCPD—accompanied Officer Glassman when he discovered the victim and found Lopez-Lopez lying in bed. After waiting for a police officer who spoke Spanish to arrive, Officer Nelson learned that Lopez-Lopez was “okay and not hurt.” Officer Nelson then placed Lopez-Lopez in the back of a patrol car until detectives arrived because “[s]omebody was hurt in his apartment one room over[,] [a]nd he had dried blood all over him, but he was not hurt or cut.” Given these circumstances, Officer Nelson believed they “needed to figure out whose blood was on him.” Eventually, Officer Nelson transported Lopez-Lopez to the GCPD headquarters in a marked patrol car and accompanied him to an interview room. According to Officer Nelson, Lopez-Lopez was not under arrest at this time, but “he wasn’t free to leave due to blood on his body and no cuts on his person.” Some of Lopez-Lopez’s roommates also traveled to the police station and were placed in separate interview rooms; but unlike Lopez-Lopez, they were driven there by a friend. Once in the interview room, Brian Dorminy—a detective with the GCPD’s homicide and assault unit[5]—initially began interviewing Lopez-Lopez before taking breaks to interview his roommates—including Evelyn, Francisco, and Melvin. Those interviews lasted approximately 30 minutes, but Lopez-Lopez’s interview lasted at least four hours. At first, Lopez-Lopez claimed he was covered in blood because he attempted to help the victim, but he also said he could not remember what happened that morning. Then, later in the interview, Lopez-Lopez stated, “I must be to blame, I must be at fault[,]” but he also said the stabbing could have been an accident. Eventually, sometime during the last hour of the interview, Lopez-Lopez admitted to being the person who stabbed the victim, saying, “ I’m the guilty one.” Ultimately, after interviewing Evelyn, Francisco, and Melvin (whose statements were inconsistent with Lopez-Lopez’s statements), Detective Dorminy believed Lopez-Lopez was “probably guilty of this crime.” As a result of this investigation, Dorminy arrested Lopez-Lopez for aggravated assault and advised him of his Miranda[6] rights. Thereafter, Lopez-Lopez was charged, via indictment, with aggravated assault and possession of a knife during the commission of a felony. Prior to trial, Lopez-Lopez filed a motion to suppress certain incriminating statements that he made during his interview with Detective Dorminy prior to his arrest, but the court denied his motion. Lopez-Lopez renewed his objection to the admission of these statements at the outset of trial, and the trial court acknowledged his objection but did not change its ruling. Following a jury trial, Lopez-Lopez was convicted of both charged offenses. Then, after obtaining new counsel, Lopez-Lopez filed a motion for a new trial, which the trial court denied after a hearing. This appeal follows. In his sole claim of error, Lopez-Lopez argues the trial court erred in denying his motion to suppress certain incriminating statements that he made prior to his formal arrest and before being advised of his Miranda rights. We agree. In reviewing a trial court’s ruling on a motion to suppress, an appellate court generally must “(1) accept a trial court’s findings unless they are clearly erroneous, (2) construe the evidentiary record in the light most favorable to the factual findings and judgment of the trial court, and (3) limit its consideration of the disputed facts to those expressly found by the trial court.”[7] But this Court reviews “de novo the trial court’s application of law to the undisputed facts.”[8] Bearing these guiding principles in mind, we turn now to Lopez-Lopez’s only claim of error. The Supreme Court of the United States has construed the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution[9] as setting forth three tiers of policecitizen encounters:[10] “(1) communication between police and citizens involving no coercion or detention . . . , (2) brief seizures that must be supported by reasonable suspicion, and (3) fullscale arrests that must be supported by probable cause.”[11] As to a third-tier encounter, “[t]he test for determining whether a person has been placed under custodial arrest is whether the individual was formally arrested or restrained to a degree associated with a formal arrest, not whether the police had probable cause to arrest.”[12] And as to whether someone is restrained to a degree associated with a formal arrest, “[t]he test is whether a reasonable person in the suspect’s position would have thought the detention would not be temporary.”[13] As a result, a trial court deciding whether to “admit evidence must apply this objective test; it is the reasonable belief of an ordinary person under such circumstances, and not the subjective belief or intent of the officer, that determines whether an arrest has been effected.”[14] Importantly, our Supreme Court has explained that Miranda warnings must be “administered to an accused who is in custody and subject to interrogation or its functional equivalent.”[15] In this case, it is undisputed Lopez-Lopez made several incriminating statements toward the end of his four-hour interview with Detective Dorminy and before he was read his Miranda rights.[16] Specifically, prior to being read those rights, Lopez-Lopez said he was the one to blame for the stabbing, he was “the guilty one[,]” and “ [m]aybe [he] attacked [the victim].” These statements were made immediately after Dorminy claimed Lopez-Lopez’s fingerprints were found on the knife. But after Lopez-Lopez was arrested and advised of his Miranda rights, he maintained that he was too drunk to remember what happened the morning the victim was stabbed, his fingerprints might be on the knife because he used it to cut lemons, and the blood on his shirt was there because he tried to help the victim after he was stabbed. As previously mentioned, Lopez-Lopez maintains the incriminating statements at issue should have been suppressed because—although he had not been formally arrested at the time he made them—he was restrained to a degree associated with a formal arrest and interrogated by police. In this regard, Detective Dorminy—who was the only witness at the suppression hearing—testified as follows. When law enforcement arrived on the scene, they placed Lopez-Lopez—who was covered in blood and vomit—in the back of a patrol car, where he remained for approximately an hour and a half. And while confined in the patrol car, Lopez-Lopez was unable to exit the car because there were no handles on the inside of the vehicle. Nevertheless, Dorminy believed Lopez-Lopez was free to leave because he could have knocked on the window and asked an officer to let him out; but Dorminy acknowledged that no law enforcement officers ever informed Lopez-Lopez that he could exit the car by doing so.[17] In stark contrast, although Lopez-Lopez was transported to the GCPD headquarters in the back of a patrol car, Francisco, Evelyn, and Melvin were permitted to drive separately and go there on “their own accord.”[18] And while Lopez-Lopez was never handcuffed, he—unlike his roommates—was taken to the station in a patrol car, which entered a secured, gated parking lot not open to the public. Then, once he arrived, a uniformed police officer with a gun escorted Lopez-Lopez from the parking lot into an interview room. Upon his arrival at the police station, Detective Dorminy contends that he did not consider Lopez-Lopez to be a suspect, but merely wanted to interview him “[t]o find out what happened.” And during this interview, Lopez-Lopez never expressed a desire to leave the interview room or the police station. Dorminy estimated that Lopez-Lopez’s interview—during which time he was in police “custody”—lasted approximately “four hours plus.” So, considering the foregoing undisputed evidence (and giving the requisite amount of deference to the trial court), we agree with Lopez-Lopez that a reasonable person in his position would not have considered his detention to be temporary in nature because he was restrained to the degree associated with a formal arrest and subjected to a police interrogation without first being read his Miranda rights.[19] Indeed, even before being transported in a patrol car to the police station, Lopez-Lopez was locked in the car and unable to leave on his own for at least an hour and a half. Then, unlike the others interviewed by law enforcement, he was taken in a patrol car into a private, gated, and secured parking lot before being escorted by a uniformed, armed police officer to an interrogation room. After that, he remained in that room and was interviewed for more than three hours before he was arrested and given his Miranda warnings. And needless to say, it is of no consequence that Detective Dorminy subjectively believed Lopez-Lopez could have left at any time.[20] As a result of the foregoing circumstances, the trial court erred in denying Lopez-Lopez’s motion to suppress the incriminating statements he made during his interview with Detective Dorminy.[21] For all these reasons, we reverse the trial court’s denial of Lopez-Lopez’s motion for a new trial, and remand this case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. Judgment reversed. Rickman, C. J., and Pipkin J., concur.
