"We were very excited when we finally found out that it had actually worked and that the police had gotten the warrants and gotten him arrested.”
A clever idea involving a teddy bear stuffed with an Apple AirTag helped police nab a suspected serial burglar.
Samuel Paul Smith is accused of breaking into several restaurants in the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, area, as well as credit card theft, according to an arrest warrant. On July 6, 2023, police say the suspect tried to break into Handley’s and caused about $1,000 of damage. Police say 30 minutes earlier he'd broken into the Sneaky Beagle wearing the same clothes.
“He's been robbing a bunch of restaurants all over the Grand Strand. It wasn't just us. So in a way, we helped catch him so that other restaurants weren't being broken into either, but it was a very creative idea,” said Shaylee Howaniec, a manager at the Sneaky Beagle, one of the restaurants police say was targeted.
Howaniec said after three break-ins, where each time the safe with cash stashed inside was stolen, someone at the restaurant came up with the idea to track the burglar down using a note and a decoy safe.
“We put a little note on there saying this was where the bank deposit was. Like, ‘Money's in here.’ We had a little stuffed animal, put the AirTag in the stuffed animal. And then, once we got the alarm that we had been broken into, the owner, he could ping where the AirTag was, and pretty much led the police right to him,” Howaniec explained of how police were able to make an arrest. “By the time that we came up with the AirTag idea, we were kind of hoping that he would come back. Because at this point, we were all very frustrated with not being able to catch him. So we were very excited when we finally found out that it had actually worked and that the police had gotten the warrants and gotten him arrested.”
Smith has not yet entered a plea. An attorney for the defendant has not yet been listed.
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