Bear with me with this yarn and you will read how the borrowing of a mobile phone and a police officer’s memory resulted in the arrest of a woman following a $40,000 burglary.
The burglary took place at a Clarinda property at the beginning of the month where
$40,000 worth of property was allegedly stolen.
The property included expensive watches and handbags, foreign currency, credit cards and jewellery.
The investigating detective obtained CCTV footage of a woman using one of the stolen credit cards not long after the burglary and subsequently circulated the information on an internal circular to other officers around the state.
This is where a sergeant from the Caulfield Divisional Response Unit steps in and recalls an incident, which took place on the train several days earlier, when he was off duty.
As he was travelling on the train a girl asked if she could borrow his mobile phone to contact a friend on Facebook.
Being the kind-hearted person that he is and the fact that he had unlimited data he happily obliged.
It was only when he saw the circular that he put two and two together and released that he was talking to the wanted burglar.
With the assistance of some more tech-savvy officers than himself, he was able to establish the identity of the woman and a warrant was issued to search her address.
The next day police attended an address in Chelsea and lo and behold they recovered a large majority of the alleged stolen property.
The 17-year-old girl was charged with burglary, theft, obtain property by deception and possess drug of dependence.
She is expected at appear at a children’s court at a later date.
