It looked like an innocent buggy and it was still in almost perfect condition. The pram had been neatly disassembled by Laura, packed, and sent through the post. But what neither woman knew is that the con had been tampered with during transport, a fact that would have remained secret forever had Mindy not discovered this detail the next day. She first noticed it during a long walk with her daughter. Mindy was thrilled with their pram and couldn’t wait to go out early the next morning with her little daughter.
She lived in sunny Florida, and the weather was perfect for a long walk along the waterfront. There was hardly anyone on the street since they’d left so early, so she could quietly go out with her daughter without distractions. But what she hadn’t counted on was that she would soon be followed by a whole procession of unexpected stalkers. “What’s going on here?” the young mother called out as she looked around nervously.
Mindy had only just arrived on the promenade when it happened. There was no human inside, just some stray dogs around with some overturned waste baskets. But when Mindy passed one of the dogs with her pram, the animal zero suddenly stood straight up. She saw the little animal looking around searchingly and soon after following Mindy in her pram. The dog must want to play, Mindy thought.
Probably if she kept walking slowly without doing anything special, the dog would turn around again and focus on the overturned waste basket. But that wasn’t what happened. In fact, it only got worse. Within a short time, it seemed like every street Mindy passed was bulging with dogs, and literally each and every one of them started following Mindy closely. The young mother’s steps quickened as she tried to get home as quickly as possible through a shorter round.
“I didn’t like all those dogs around me and my baby,” she said. But she could have never seen the actual reason these dogs were following Mindy coming. She now arrived home, and when she looked out from her living room window, she counted no fewer than 24 dogs howling on her lawn. “What do all these dogs want from me?” the now anxious mother thought.
Even the neighbor’s dogs were now starting to howl, and Mindy was starting to get quite scared. It was clear by now that it had something to do with her pram. After all, her neighbor’s dogs were normally always quiet. In the two years she’d lived in this house, she never heard the four-legged friends. She, therefore, decided to call Laura.
Her trembling fingers pressed the number, and Laura appeared on the other end of the line. “Hi Mandy, how do you like the pram?” asked this still-ignorant Laura. But during this phone call, they would both find out a strange secret. Mindy explained how she’d been chased by dogs all morning and how she could just not leave the pram alone.
She herself had already walked outside to see if it was up to her, but the eyes of all the dogs remained focused on the window the pram was behind. Laura didn’t understand the thing. She never experienced this problem herself and assured Mindy that she hadn’t done anything crazy with it. Mindy decided to use the video function of her phone and let Laura watch as she inspected the pram. There was nothing weird about the stroller.
In fact, the pram almost seemed to still have the new factory smell. Nor were there any strange stains on it. Mindy was about to give up when Laura saw something on the video screen on the phone that didn’t belong there. Through the red fabric, a very small light seemed to shine. Mindy described it as if someone shone a laser light on the pram from a distance, but this light wasn’t coming from outside.
No, this light shone from inside the pram and made its way precisely through the fabric to the outside. As Mindy got closer, she also saw that the fabric had been opened and restitched at this spot. Laura swore on her life that she was not the one who’d placed the light in the pram, and Mindy believed her. But then what was it doing here? She decided to grab a pair of scissors and cut the stitching loose.
Laura watched the discovery tensely from the video. It was a small device, not much bigger than a USB stick, and it did indeed have a bright red light built into it. She looked at it from all sides but at that moment did not really understand what she was looking at. It was immediately clear, though, that this was what the dogs were reacting so violently to because the moment Laura walked outside with a stick, the dogs immediately stopped staring at the window, and they started following Laura instead. Laura had a bad feeling about it and so the two mothers decided to call the police immediately.
The police were called in before Mindy could even finish her whole story. She received an answer she hadn’t expected. In fact, the officer on the other end of the line knew exactly what this was all about. He recognized the device and even told her that at this very moment, he had a similar light right in front of him. He advised Mindy to stay at home and, on top of that, lock all windows and doors.
The officer would come to her house immediately to explain everything. What was going on here anyway? This sounded serious. They decided to listen to the officer and quickly locked all the windows and doors. Nervously, she sat on the sofa waiting for the officer.
To be honest, Laura too had decided she wanted to help and had gone into her car to drive towards Mindy’s house. She looked nervously at the pram and secretly wished she’d never bought the thing. Laura couldn’t do anything about this, of course, but she hadn’t even had the pram for a day and was already part of a police investigation. After about 30 minutes, the bell rang, and the young mother heard knocking on her door. There were two policemen.
She let the men in uniform in and showed them the laser light she’d retrieved from the bottom of her pram. “Can you guys finally tell me what this is because I’m starting to get a bit scared?” Mindy asked nervously. The officers tried to calm the mother down but also confirmed to her that this was not just a light. It was a GPS device that could perfectly transmit a location via radio waves.
“Ah, that of course explains why the dogs are following Mindy,” but unlike Mindy, they could hear the high-pitched tones in the device. But then what was this device doing in her pram? The officer said Mindy was in time with taking action as this was not the first report about this. In fact, over 50 burglaries had been committed in the city over the past few months, and this GPS device was eventually found at each location. The thieves placed a GPS device in certain products, and through this device, they could not only find the house remotely but also disable the alarm.
Each time the device was discovered too late, and police were only on the scene after the house had already been robbed. But Mindy and Laura’s discovery in this case was an unprecedented breakthrough. The officers devised a simple but effective plan. They would leave the tracker in the house. As the burglars weren’t allowed to know about anything, Mindy and Laura were given shelter with their neighbors so they could keep an eye on the situation from a safe distance.
The officers explained that the burglars often struck the night after the package was delivered. So now they only had to wait until dark. The officers exchanged their uniforms for normal clothes and hid in Mindy’s house. Everything had to look as deserted and attractive as possible to the burglars. And the cops were right because the same night at 01:22, Mindy and Laura saw a van park in front of the house.
It was a perfectly normal postal delivery event, so it was obvious the thieves worked there. Makes sense because they were the only people who’d gotten their hands on the pram after Laura sold it to Mindy. Clever, though. No one would be surprised if a mail delivery van drove down the street, so they could work undisturbed. Mindy whispered to Laura.
The door of the van opened, and two darkly dressed men got out. They looked at a device in their hands and walked towards the front door. These dastardly men still had no idea what to expect. Mindy alerted the officers in her house via walkie-talkie she’d been given, and because of this, everyone was now aware. The men indeed switched off the alarm and unsuspectingly stepped into Mindy’s house.
A torch was shown around, and the two officers hiding in the broom cupboard heard the burglars chuckling softly. They just got hold of the first object when the officer struck. “Hands up, you’re under arrest!” both officers shouted.
The burglars dropped the radio they were about to steal from their hands and tried to sprint towards the front door as fast as they could, but it was already too late.
The officers had already informed patrolling colleagues of what was about to happen, and when Mindy gave the signal via her walkie-talkie, all the officers in the area started moving. The thieves ran right into the chest of three huge walls dressed in uniform and were arrested right there on the spot and taken to the station.
Because they had helped so much and provided a breakthrough in this month’s long investigation, the officers wanted to do something special for the women. Mindy’s house was safe again, but the pram where this all started now had a big gaping hole. Therefore, both mothers were given a new pram by the local police.
Mindy received a beautiful.
