MUKILTEO, Washington — Police in Mukilteo apprehended a theft suspect Thursday after a GPS unit on the victim’s phone led police right to where the man had fled.
The entire incident lasted less than 40 minutes.
The teen victim said he was at a ball field with friends Thursday night when an 18-year-old man took the teen’s phone and disappeared.
Snohomish County deputies didn’t show up to the field, though – they went to a residential street a few miles away. The victim’s mother had used her cell phone to activate a GPS tracker on her son’s phone. That signal told her the phone was within 25 yards of an Everett house.
The 15-year-old victim and his father waited for officers in a car near the home.
According to court papers, a deputy confronted 18-year-old Hussein Al-Zawady, who the victim ID’d as the thief when he came to the door.
Al-Zawady allegedly told officers he buried the phone along a nearby nature trail. Police went there and found the $300 device under a stack of leaves and arrested Al-Zawady for robbery.
Prosecutors later dropped the charge from robbery to theft since police said the suspect didn’t threaten the victim when he took the phone.