After her car was taken with her nine-year-old kid inside, a distraught Georgia woman had the foresight to utilize a phone GPS gadget to assist authorities in tracking down her son.
Jerrica Moore, 31, dashed into a Goodwill store in Atlanta last week while running an errand, leaving her toddler in the car for a brief while.
However, suspected carjacker Darius White, 38, just required that amount of time to climb inside the running vehicle and go.
Fortunately for the quick-thinking mother, her son’s phone included a geolocation feature that helped authorities to track down his kidnapper.
Moore approached an Atlanta police officer in his patrol car on April 4, when the theft occurred, according to bodycam video. She then takes her phone and uses the app’s geolocation map to zoom in.
The cop calls in over the radio, ‘They’re tracing the automobile to South Jordan.’
Georgia State Police, who joined in the search, immediately located the vehicle and rammed it off the road, rendering it unusable and allowing the youngster to flee through the back window.
White stayed in the car until authorities yanked him out, arguing the entire time that police had put his life in jeopardy by striking the vehicle.
The officer in front of the camera then exits his squad car, pulls his weapon, and arrests White. The footage then turns to a different officer’s body camera as he rushes to the distressed kid.
One of the cops participating in the chase was Police Pilot Leroy Champion.
‘Whenever a child is involved, my stress level goes up a little bit,’ he explained. ‘You do all you can to locate that individual.’ You fly, fly, fly, then go acquire some fuel before flying, fly, fly.’
Within 60 minutes of the mother’s call, White was captured and the kid was rescued.
During the chase, the kid, his mother, and all cops were unharmed.