Police See Small White Dot on Screen, Instantly Rush to Location of Missing Child
Sometimes, it doesn’t take a gun or a baton for police to capture a bad guy or to protect the innocent. All it takes is a drone.
In Freetown, Massachusetts, a drone equipped with a heat-detection camera was able to locate a woman who allegedly stabbed a 61-year-old relative and made off with her 2-year-old child.
According to a media release by the Freetown Police Department, the incident occurred on the evening of Dec. 16, when a resident called emergency services to report “that a neighbor, covered in blood, was at the resident’s door.
“Officers were dispatched to the location and, upon arrival, identified the victim as a 61-year-old suffering from a stab wound to the face,” the media release read.
“The victim identified the suspect as 25-year-old Angel-Leah Duarte and told police that she was located in a nearby home. The victim was then transported by Freetown ambulance to a local hospital.”
When police arrived at the 61-year-old’s home, however, they discovered that the suspect had fled on foot with her 2-year-old child. Duarte was arrested after a tip from a nearby resident — but her child wasn’t with her.
“Police, now joined by the department’s K-9 unit and members of the Freetown Fire Department, began a search of the area for the child,” the release read.
“The search was then intensified to include K-9, drone and search and rescue teams from the Southeastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council. Additionally, residents were alerted to the missing child and search activity via a reverse 911 call. In the meantime, Duarte was transported by Freetown ambulance to a local hospital.”
The Dartmouth Police Department was one of the responding agencies — and it was their drone, equipped with thermal imaging, that found a small white dot in the midst of a wooded area:
According to a statement on the Dartmouth Police Department’s Facebook page, the drone operator spotted the heat signature within 15 minutes of arriving on the scene. He guided a fellow policeman to the location via radio.
“Upon reaching the area where the heat signature was identified, Sergeant [Scott] Stanton located and recovered the child,” the Dartmouth Police Department said in its statement.
“This incident was the perfect example of where the crossroads of technology and good teamwork came together,” said Brian P. Levesque, Dartmouth chief of police.
“Had it not been for the use of our drone, and the excellent communication between my two officers, the outcome of this incident would have most likely been grave.”
Freetown Police reported that, due to “the child’s prolonged exposure to the rain and cold temperature, she was transported via Lakeville ambulance to a nearby hospital.”
WBZ-TV in Boston reported that Duarte was set to be arraigned Dec. 19 on charges of attempted murder and assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon.
She pleaded not guilty. Her bail was set at $50,000.
According to the Fall River Herald News, the arraignment was postponed, however, due to a defense request for a competency hearing.
Defense attorney Rene Brown requested the defendant undergo a 15(a) evaluation, which determines “whether a defendant in a criminal case is competent to stand trial or is criminally responsible by reason of mental illness or mental defect.”
In a report delivered to the court Dec. 22, the Herald News reported, Dr. Kimberly Bistis said Duarte may have had a psychotic break from reality. The report said the suspect showed “signs and symptoms of potential mental illness during [the] COVID [pandemic], when she felt very isolated, being locked in her home.”
The suspect had an “extremely tumultuous childhood,” the report alleged, and “[p]art of her childhood trauma was being locked in the house, or locked in the closet, locked in rooms.”
Unfortunately, if what is alleged is true — and the defense seems to be staking out an insanity defense as opposed to contesting law enforcement’s version of events — she’s managed to transfer her trauma to her own child in a profound, unsettling way.
However, at least the little girl is alive. That’s because police responded quickly and efficiently — and it wasn’t brute force that saved the child. It was a drone.
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