I have custody of 2 children (10)G & (12)B. This morning I wake her up for school at 6am. When I go into her room, Her phone's alarm is going off and so is her brothers phone alarm. He's slow to wake up so she reaches over him to turn off his alarm. They have twin beds. He'd been up a couple of times during the night with bathroom troubles so I decided to let him sleep since his school starts about 45 minutes after hers.
I take granddaughter to the bus stop at roughly 6:25am which is only a block and a half away. Two to four minutes at most. I arrive home and wake up my grandson. He wakes up and can't find his phone. We spend 10 or 15 minutes looking for it, and I'm calling it hoping to hear its ring.
We don't find it but I take him to his bus stop which is about a block & a half in the opposite direction.
About 4pm today I get a call from my grandson's phone. I answer saying: "Oh great! You found your phone!"
The person on the other end says "NO, we found this phone and were calling to tell you it had been found."
They give me their location which is about 7 1/2 miles from where I live according to my GPS, but in a ratty part of town just north of Downtown Fort Worth.
Sooooo, in the 2-4 minutes I was gone taking grandaughter to her bus stop, someone came into my house. Found my grandson sleeping in his bed and took his phone which was laying beside him. Nothing else was missing in my home. ((That I can tell)).
I stop at an ATM and grab a $20.00 bill to give to the couple that had called, that found my grandson's phone. They're a homeless couple!. They said they found the phone in the grass close to where I met them.
This whole fuqking deal has me a bit distraught/worried!
Lived here 7 years without so much as an issue. One time about 5 years ago I'd been watering my front yard and my water hose disappeared. Whoever took that, was kind enough to have turned my water off.
That's it.

Get the kids a big a ass dog, and put out game cams! That weird stuff you described!

Geezus. Were your doors unlocked? Thank God they didn't take the child.

Either way, that is messed up man. I'd be installing a security system post haste!

Did the granddaughter take the phone and chuck it out the bus window because she was pissed at him for some reason? That's very possible.

Not at all! She wasn't even out of my sight during this episode...

Indian burial ground

Fuuuuggghhhhkkkk.

I would be consulting LEO. Installing outside cameras, installing simply safe, buying a dog, talking to neighbors,...

^^^This^^^

Damn David! Be safe!!! Glad the kids are alright!

Thanks Neal!

But you weren't with her on the bus is what I'm saying...

"Oreo blizzards" is damn near as random as that

Pit bull.... two pit bulls.... rotty ?? Doberman ?

Something.... something that gets feared and respected..... and sleeps on the kids beds at night.

Not something she'd do. Her school is about a mile and a half away..., in a very affluent neighborhood. No where near where the phone was found.

We have a dog., but the most you could fear from her would be licked to death...

I would have involved authorities as soon as I received that call.

Gotcha! Just asking the question man. Hoping to find an alternative to the bad.


That would have me on edge like you wouldn't believe.

I couldn't stop thinking about getting a Friggin $500.00 Iphone + back. Believe me..., they've lost enough phones that my billfold has a permanent bruise on it..

poltergeist

I'd be locking all doors every time I left the house. On the other hand, who would steal a phone only to discard it minutes later?

About a 9hr time difference between missing and found.. But was taken during the 3-5 minutes I was out of the house.

The less contaminating DNA the better, if you could get em to test for it.

The loser's DNA is probably in a database somewhere.

You fked up.

Nobody got hurt.

Don't do it again.

POS may have been looking for the girl, DM.

They must’ve seen you leave, it wasn’t a coincidence. I’d keep my eye open for neighbors that are watching.

Glad nobody was harmed but I’d be very unsettled over this.

That’s what I wondered.

You need to pay a stranger to come around and beat heck outta that dog with a rolled up newspaper.

Roger that!
Someone saw me leave..., perhaps a cohort saw me returning and waved off the perp. Could have been much worse!!!

I'm not going to discount this idea..., and it's something I would never have thought of.

If brother has his sisters phone number on his phone, now they have it!

You best caution her about believing any emergency calls about someone needing to take her to a hospital or something.

Sorry, it’s not adding up to me.

Perp sneaks into house and steals an iPhone, presumably to sell it. Perp who stole the phone wouldn’t go to the trouble of stealing it to throw it away.

iPhones have a password and some have fingerprint ID in order to use the phone for anything except dialling 911. So how did they call you? And how did they know you were the right one to call?

I was wondering the same thing, but on the face of the phone were two missed calls from "PAPA". Even though the phone is locked. If you hold down the activate button. Siri opens and says... How can I help you?
If you say: Call Papa. His phone calls me.

If the phone had location services enabled you may be able to gain additional incite into where it was; and when.

https://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/973297

https://www.lifewire.com/location-history-google-maps-iphone-1683392

If this doesn’t work, involving the service provider and the authorities might.

Something doesn’t add up though - why would they take just the phone??

Yeah....I know. There’s a lot that just doesn’t fit?.....except the Indian burial ground theory. 😁

You have the option of your phone not being password or fingerprint ID protected. Most kids are not allowed to have their phones locked like that because adults want to see what they are up to anytime they ask.

The police are on the way now. I'm reporting the whole thing.

And then chows on the kids face for rolling over in the middle of the night in their sleep.

True this! Or attacks some neighborhood kid. And THIS is grand central for neighborhood kids!

Dang, DMc. That's pretty perplexing.

If the homeless couple was able to place the call, then whoever took the phone in the first place was able to get into it. Maybe they were looking for something specific...a photo, a text message, or something along those lines, and then when it was found (or NOT) they discarded the phone. Can't think of any other scenario that works. The break-in was seemingly all about that phone, or something that was on it.

Maybe the boy has something he really needs to tell you.

Good! Get it on record and do what you can possibly do to protect those little tikes. Once someone has been in there, they might be telling how easy it is to others with worse intentions.

That dog can learn everyone isn't a friend, too. You can always step In and run the bad guy away with a gruff tone of voice.

This^^^^▪or Grannys face for farting.

^^^This^^^

Sounds like to me they were watching your house.

They’d be some dead mofo’s if I saw them in my neighborhood again.

You need to get something like the "Ring" system. Door bell and cameras that alert your phone.

You're assuming they broke in for a cell phone. Probably not.

I have 6 game cameras around my place. Walmart here has Tasco 8 megapixl for 28.00 they do good in the day light but are so so at night, they have 10 megapixl for 38 that do good day or night. I put mine 10 ft up a tree cause most dirt bags dont/wont look up. All ya need is a small limb to tilt it in the angle ya want. Glad the Lil ones are ok.

Doesn't sound to me like they "broke" in. Sounds like they walked in through an unlocked door. Some kid the grandson knows is the most likely culprit but since nobody knows that for sure at this point, it's better to be safe than sorry. The OP is getting it on record with the PD. Good first step. Second get a security system. While this is going on, teach those kids about situational awareness no matter where they are.

Lots of assumptions, including that someone broke in. Maybe sister was pissed at brother for not turning off his phone, pocketed it, and left it at the bus stop. Someone found it there, took it thinking they could pawn it, realized it was locked, then discarded it where the homeless folks found it and used Siri to call.

Hopefully it will turn out to be something less nefarious than what is being postulated...

Alternate theory #1.

Number two is that the boy had the phone in his pack, pocket, whatever and it fell out on the way to school / at school.

# 2 is not possible because the phone was gone before the boy left for school.

The homeless couple didn't "find" the phone....

Sure it is. Phone was missing. Who the heck knows where it was. We are talking 10 and 12 year old kids here. My wife can loose her cell phone nearly anywhere ... and if the ringer is turned off the alarm will still go off but you won’t locate it by calling it.

PREZACTLY!!!

I don't use siri or any of that automated crap so I have no idea, but I would think that you could not even access siri without unlocking the phone. Or, if you COULD access siri on a locked phone, then how could you tell it to call someone in the address book? How the hell does this stuff work?

Okay, say that's the case, and I think the implication is the homeless folks stole the phone themselves. If so, then why did they bother to call Dave later? Why even bother at all? And more mysteriously, he says nothing else was missing. Just the damned phone. Why??? And why???

AMEN. I hope so too.

I would not rest until this was resolved.

I once spent an entire summer tracking down the ass bags that stole my tools and fishing tackle out of my shop when I lived in town. I was obsessed with finding the ones who did it. When I did, a detective called me at work to thank me for solving 27 burglaries in the county. Lots of people got their schitt back.

I cannot imagine if someone messed with my granddaughter!

Granddaughter was last one to handle the phone and you called the police?

His alarm went off that morning and the granddaughter turned it off.

The problem with "some kid getting the phone" is that it ended up 7 1/2 miles away in a ghetto neighborhood!

It depends on how you have your settings configured. If you allow Siri to work on a locked home screen so that you can call people without having to unlock it, they could easily do this. The screen could read “missed call Papa” from when he tried to call the phone and they could just hit the home button to access Siri and say “call papa.”

Sister has no ill intentions for her brother whatsoever. The phone was on his bed when I took her to the bus stop. The phone was gone when I got home and WOKE her brother up to get ready for school. His bus comes 45 minutes after hers.

DMc,
Have you checked to see if location services was enabled on the phone? If so, you or someone who knows how can track where that phone was. I promise you, if it was, apple knows everywhere that phone has been in the last 18 hours.

Yeah. I get that DMc. Again, just trying to hope for the best case scenario in this.


If some crackhead (or worse) was in your house, that close to your grandchild while they slept, that just makes me shudder.

Gotcha. Thanks for the explanation.

^^^This^^^

Yep. And I’m betting that’s exactly what they did.
Maybe they were planning on telling David the kidnapped they kid for ransom and then chicken out.

This evening I took all 3 of our phones to "Pro-Tech" and had them all coordinated. Any of our phones can now find the others. (Unless a techie steals the phone"!!!) I'll be looking at a more sophisticated app from Apple tomorrow. I guess in the next few days I'll be looking at security systems also. Just like "having friends in LOW places, I'm low tech and have friends in the same shape!" It's rough being old and watch the world wiz by.

Probably, but why did they call him to come get it?

Gawd! Can you imagine?! I would be loaded for bear in about 7 seconds!

I am too.



and a back up.. (with a nifty lazer sight)

I was just gonna say you can bet your ass David was loaded for Bear. 😬

Like button.

Neal knows I'm a die hard 45acp guy...



..and I don't have a thing against revolvers either!

DMc ^^^^^^^^

Homeless stole the phone wanting a reward and that is exactly how it went down.

Lucky they didn't hurt your child.

LOL.... Hardly. I pray I never have to kill someone, and live with that the rest of my life.

My gut tells me they didn't steal it, but my instincts tell me the person that did, may have been watching from not far away.

They or one or someone was already in the house, during the night...hiding in a closet?

I feel the same.

But if someone even tried to mess with my granddaughter, there would be hell to pay.

They'd be dealing with a scenario similar to this. Not exactly CCW huh?

The silver lining to all of this is that his (Grandson's) phone was stolen, rather than me being pissed at him the rest of his/my life) for losing another damned phone.

FYI,

I'd quit posting pics of the kids, even here...unless you're retired, drink a lot of beer and sit in the garage with all the lights off.

Its a [bleep] up world these days.

It would be my elk hunting partner and I 20+ years ago chasing bulls. We were one bull shy of 100% with our last hunt in 2015. He was 72 with bad ankles, he realized he could not do it. I killed a 5x5 the first morning, afterward we hiked to our old camps and just enjoyed the time together.

My first.



Us on the last.



My last.



Typical camp sky up from Leadville.

Nice pics Ed. I think they might have ended up in the wrong thread.

DMc - any updates? Police have anything to say? Any luck using the location history on the phone?

Hispanic female cop. Pretty much the same comments as here. A serious confrontation was missed by seconds or maybe a minute. A recommendation of heightened situational awareness and vigilance locking doors.
Tracking services on Apple I-phones suck big time. Also, cops won't enforce the law even if tracking indicates your phone is inside some random house. Apple has a new app that bears an initial cost plus $9.95 a month, but the sales person did his best to discourage it, highlighting it's disadvantages. (In other words, pay us a fee but don't expect us to find your phone; "But we can sure as hell tell you which cell tower it last bounced off of.")
It's a pretty uncomfortable feeling knowing someone close by is brazen enough to just come walking into your home. Not to mention the kids are scared now more so than usual. Checking with neighbors didn't produce anything other than intensifying their own fear. Hopefully we'll all have more "watchful" eyes.