Phone App Helped Prevent Possible Break-In, Green Country Woman Says

A Green Country woman says an app on her phone helped her stop two people who might have been trying to break into her home.

The homeowner says a notification popped up on her phone just in time for police to find the two suspects.

She says the only reason she even has a surveillance system is because several of her neighbors have recently had their cars broken into.  On Tuesday, she says, those cameras may have prevented a crime.

Video shows a man jiggling the door handle, then waiting after realizing it was locked, not knowing a notification had been sent to the homeowner’s phone to let her know someone was on her porch.

“They went up there, they checked the doors, they were seeing if anybody was home,” said Tulsa Police Officer Jeanne MacKenzie.  “Officers on scene felt like they were casing the house or the neighborhood.”

The homeowner says she called police as soon as she saw the man and a woman at her home.  She says they sat in her driveway with the vehicle running for 10 or 15 minutes, but when police got there, the vehicle was gone.

“Because of the nature of the call, the officer actually decided to drive back to that original address where the victim had called from and that vehicle was again parked in the victim’s driveway,” said MacKenzie.

Police say Samantha Fike and Zachary Larsen were inside that vehicle.  Officers arrested Fike for a misdemeanor warrant and Larsen for driving with a suspended license.

“Both subjects stated that they thought they were at a friend’s house, but they obviously were at the wrong house,” MacKenzie said.  “And they stated that they had just pulled into the driveway when the officer pulled them over, not knowing that we have video surveillance from earlier in the morning of them sitting in this victim’s driveway.”

The homeowner watched the whole thing on her phone at work.

Officer MacKenzie says that “because of technology, because she called 911, and because officers were there, we were able to stop this.”