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Oregon Man Called Police About A Burglar. Armed Officers Found A Rogue Roomba


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2019 Apr 12, 7:39am   653 views  4 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (55)   💰tip   ignore  

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/10/711819433/oregon-man-called-police-about-a-burglar-armed-officers-found-a-rogue-roomba

The Washington County sheriff in Oregon says there was nothing unusual about the call. Sure, it was broad daylight — 1:48 p.m. local time exactly — but "crime can happen anytime."

So the frantic call from a house guest about a burglar making loud rustling noises inside the house, specifically from within the locked bathroom, deserved an urgent response, Sgt. Danny DiPietro, a sheriff's spokesman, tells NPR.

"The man had just gone for a walk with his nephew's dog and when he came back, he could see shadows moving back and forth under the bathroom door," DiPietro says.

Resources were immediately deployed: three seasoned deputies — one with at least 20 years on the force — a detective who happened to be in the area, and two canine officers from Beaverton Police Department, about 7 miles outside Portland.

They surrounded the Cedar Hills house, then made their way inside, guns unholstered. "And the whole time they were yelling, 'Sheriff' and 'Police' but the burglar wouldn't come out. He wouldn't say anything," DiPietro says.

Instead, the banging got louder. "Like a loud thud, thud, thud on glass." Officers assumed the burglar was trying to escape. "That he was trying to open a window and jump out and run away."

Hearts pounding, guns ready to fire, they counted down and entered the bathroom. But instead of confronting a suspect, they found ... a rogue Roomba robot vacuum that was apparently doing "a very thorough" job.


Something similar happened to us, but we didn't call the police thank god. My wife told me there was something going on downstairs at 2am. So I had to go look, and lo and behold our Roomba (actually an Eufy) had gotten into the laundry room and bumped the door closed behind itself. It was just going back and forth, bumping into the washer and the door.

I still don't know why the thing decided to start up at 2am.

Comments 1 - 4 of 4        Search these comments

1   HeadSet   2019 Apr 12, 8:01am  

I still don't know why the thing decided to start up at 2am.

Hacking. Did you piss off the neighbors kid?
2   Patrick   2019 Apr 12, 8:25am  

Could be. The radio controls on those things are probably easy to hack.
3   Shaman   2019 Apr 12, 8:44am  

Haha!
Rise of the machines!
4   Tenpoundbass   2019 Apr 12, 9:05am  

I'm sure the Toy Makers are seditious humanity haters.

I have a couple toddlers in the house, and now these days every toy for kids that age is an electronic button riddled toy that beeps, and plays cheesy melodies. Complete with Car honks, telephone rings, sound bites of a girl or boy saying something.
The weird thing is, when the batteries start going low. The Toy becomes unusable, but if you let it sit in the toy box. In the middle of the night. One or a few of the Toys will start randomly playing sound bytes from toy.
You just start hearing Sirens, or a Horn honking, and if the batteries are too low to play the full clip it will just stutter "dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut,dut"

So then you have to get up turn on the lights, dig through the toy box pick up each toy one by one, and hold it to your ear, as it's not at full volume to figure out which one is the culprit. Which has its own challenge, because it's intermittent and not constant. Might not even make a noise until you give up and turn out the light.

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