App Catches Alleged Burglars Red-Handed

But the burglary was stopped by a real-life neighbor
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 16, 2015 7:30 PM CDT

A New York resident may have had a fancy app to alert him when his apartment was being burglarized, but it was old-fashioned neighborly behavior that kept the suspected thieves from cleaning him out. The New York Post reports Danny Wheeler was at work when an app called Canary alerted his phone there was trouble at his apartment. He was able to see images of two men entering his apartment on his phone and immediately called 911, described the suspects, and hurried home. “I was making my way [home] watching the entire video like a madman in the cab,” Wheeler tells the Post.

By the time he got home, officers were already there, WABC-TV reports. And so were most of Wheeler's belongings, thanks to a concerned neighbor. Seamus McDaid saw the two men on the fire escape outside Wheeler's apartment and yelled at them. On the Canary video, you can see both men hightail it—one out the front door, the other back out the window—after hearing McDaid. In a YouTube post, Wheeler says the Canary alarm in his apartment didn't go off until about 20 seconds after McDaid had already scared the suspects off. Regardless, he was glad to have the app. “Without having the ability to see what happened, I would have just come home to a broken-in apartment,” he tells the Post. "I would have gone nuts." (More apps stories.)

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