Officer Soros Arnold Police Find Kid In Trashcan Using Citizen's Ring Doorbell

Doorbell Cam Footage Shows How It Helped Police Catch Subject On The Run
https://www.myleaderpaper.com/news/police_fire/arnold-resident-s-ring-doorbell-camera-helps-police-find-robbery-suspect/article_fee726b4-b87d-11ed-bce9-53ce8d725483.html

Arnold Police recently found a juvenile hiding in a trash can outside a home on Marilyn Drive and arrested him for allegedly stealing alcohol from the nearby Target store. Officers also arrested a different juvenile suspected in the theft and recovered the alcohol, police reported.

Detective Lt. Jeremy Christopher said Arnold Police will not identify the juveniles, other than to say they are boys.

He also said the department is seeking second-degree robbery charges against the boys through the Jefferson County Juvenile Court because a Target employee was injured during the alleged theft.

At about 1:10 p.m. Feb. 20, officers were called to Target, 3849 Vogel Road, after the boys allegedly stole about $540 worth of alcohol. The two allegedly placed a storage container in a shopping cart and put the alcohol inside the container and tried to leave the store with the alcohol, the report said.

An employee stopped the two and tried to look inside the storage container, but one of the juveniles reportedly slammed the lid on the employee’s hand. In addition, one of the juveniles allegedly hit the female employee with the cart as they ran out of the store. The woman suffered minor injuries but was not taken to a hospital, according to the report.

When officers arrived at the store, the two juveniles already had run away with the shopping cart. However, both the shopping cart and alcohol were recovered outside the nearby Xist Fitness Center, 3823 Vogel Road.

By about 1:25 p.m., police had chased one of the juveniles to the 300 block of Marilyn Drive, and the chase can be seen on two videos posted on TikTok by an Arnold woman who lives in the home where the boy was hiding. The woman’s TikTok handle is @amandanash348.

The first video showed a boy wearing a red shirt and gray sweatpants running through the home’s back and front yards and then officers chasing after him. After a while, the boy could be seen climbing into a trash can behind the house.

In the second video, an officer knocked on the home’s door and appeared to press the Ring doorbell and talk with the woman, telling her that officers were chasing someone around her home and asking if any younger adults live there.

The woman spoke to the officer through the Ring doorbell’s speaker and said only she and her husband live at the home and were at work. She asked if she needed to come home, and the officer said she didn’t.

The officer then asked the woman to check her surveillance video to see if she could see the boy running around her home. After a short time, the woman could be heard saying, “He’s in my trash can by my garage.”

The officers ran behind the house, and one officer could be heard saying, “Open that lid, now; I know you’re in there.”

One of the officers opened the lid, and the juvenile came out of the trash can, broke away from the two officers and ran into a wooded area behind the house. Three officers chased him into the woods, and eventually two other officers could be seen helping the three officers and juvenile up a hill out of the woods.

The other juvenile was arrested at about 1:25 p.m. on Slover Lane in the same neighborhood, Arnold Police reported.

Christopher said surveillance videos, like the ones the woman’s Ring doorbell camera captured, often help law enforcement officers in their investigations.

“Any type of surveillance camera on a house is beneficial to us,” he said. “That is something we commonly look for when we are investigating crimes. One of the first things we look for is surveillance footage. We definitely encourage home surveillance systems like this, not only to protect the homeowner but also to help us with our investigations.”