[Kyobanim]

Granted, this is slightly different, but what the heck . . .

Web camera thwarts Deltona burglary from the Orlando Sentinel

A Kentucky woman sees the 2 teenage suspects raid a house via the Internet. Both were later arrested.

By Alicia A. Caldwell | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted July 14, 2004


DELTONA -- A woman more than 500 miles and three states away foiled two teenage burglars at a Deltona home Tuesday, police said.

The Kentucky woman, whom investigators did not identify, watched the teens raid the house live via a Web camera attached to a friend's home computer.

The woman called the Volusia County Sheriff's Office at 2:11 p.m. to tell deputies about the break-in and described the incident in vivid detail as she watched it unfold on her computer.

No one was at the victim's home in Deltona at the time. The home's resident, identified by investigators as Leonard Meeks, could not be reached for comment.

"I would have called 911, but I'm calling from out of state. I'm watching a friend's [house] from a Web cam, and two men just broke into his house," the Kentucky woman told a sheriff's dispatcher. "They're in the house right now."

About two minutes after first call, the woman told the dispatcher that the thieves had apparently found the camera and put something over it to block her view.

When deputies got to the house on Ainsworth Avenue at 2:14 p.m. the suspects were gone, but a neighbor spotted one of the boys, a 13-year-old, in her bushes about 20 minutes later. He was arrested just before 3 p.m., investigators said.

More than an hour after that, a K-9 unit found a 17-year-old boy in the woods nearby. When that suspect ran, the police dog bit him, investigators said. The 17-year-old was taken to Florida Hospital Fish Memorial in Orange City for treatment of a dog bite to his shoulder, deputies said.

Investigators said they found electronics taken from the house along with a knife, which they think the boys used while burglarizing the house. It was unclear Tuesday evening what charges the boys would face, but investigators said armed burglary was likely one that would be filed.

Tuesday was not the first time a Web camera has helped police solve a crime, according to published newspaper reports. In March, a Washington state family vacationing in Washington, D.C., reportedly used a Web camera to spot a teenage neighbor who had broken into the home and was downloading pornography. Last November an Oregon car-wash manager watched as a thief tried to crack the business' safe. And in February 2002, an Atlantic Beach man used a Web camera to get pictures of a thief suspected of repeatedly burglarizing his home.