How to activate iPhone 4

Question

I am an apple fanatic and sometime last year I purchased an iPhone 4 from another guy in Pretoria. The phone had no battery and the screen was broken. I went on to fix all these problems. The phone was working perfectly but when I went on to see that the phone was linked to another person's Apple ID I went on to send the owner an email to remove the ID.
I outlined to him how I got the phone and he suspected that his gardener is the one who stole the phone from him since the same location where I bought the phone is the same location where the owner of the phone lives. It was December, 2014 when we discussed about this issue and we agreed that we will meet after the holidays since we were both away from town during this period. All seemed to flow smoothly when we talked in December, since we understood  each other in our email conversations.
I came back from holidays in January and I contacted him and he started avoiding me. I didn't want to act like a criminal, I wanted things to be transparent and all I wanted was fidelity between the two of us (the owner getting his phone and me getting my money). That's why I tried to heighten my innocence by pleading with him to open a case with the South African Police so that the person who stole the phone will be brought to book. From that period when I tried to use the police as an option to this matter the guy has vanished and he never responded to my emails. I send him one email at least once a week and I am hoping that one day he will respond.
I don't know how apple will deal with this matter, and I am ready to go with this issue further, I am ready to give the owner the phone and all I want from him is to open a case at the police since he is saying that his phone was stolen. I think under the rules and regulations of Apple Inc, stolen phones must be reported.
I don't know if there is someone to help me with this. I am ready to give the owner the phone and I want him to open a case so that the people who are behind the disappearance of his phone will explain better - how they got the phone.

Answer 1

The phone can be activated in the store or at home. All phones shipped directly to the customer are activated at home by connecting to iTunes.
Phones purchased in stores are usually activated there, but on release day the last 2 years, the Apple servers were overloaded and many who picked up their phones had to activate later in the day at home.
Last year, some had to wait 2 days to activate due to the overload.
A third way is via AT&T, calling them from another phone. AT&T customer service can do it from their end.