Apple iPhone thief ‘caught just minutes later after GPS tracked him’
The phone was being used to test a new real-time tracking application, which
had been produced by Covia Labs, a software company based in the San
Francisco Bay suburb of Mountain View.
David Kahn, the companys chief executive, said he sent the 23 year-old female
intern, who has not been named, out to walk around the block during a
demonstration for a client.
The software is designed to help police and the military track officers in the
field.
But as Mr Kahn and his client David Fonkalsrud watched a live map of the
phone’s location on his computer they became puzzled by how quickly the
image was moving down the street.
Police said Toure had escaped by bicycle.
?We kind of noticed while that was happening, boy, she was really starting to
move pretty fast and she wasn’t heading back toward the place,” Mr Kahn told
the San Jose
Mercury News.
“Moments later she comes bursting into the office and said she’d just
been mugged.”
Mr Kahn said he used the software to track the thief’s movements while the
intern called police.
“It was pretty exciting to realise what was going on and wondering if he
had noticed,” Mr Kahn said.
?I actually had an adrenaline rush. Obviously if he had turned off the phone
that would have been it.”
Mr Fonkalsrud added: ?It probably sounds almost unreal. It’s almost as if it’s
a bank robber picking a day to rob a bank when there are five police
officers in the branch.”
The pair denied the incident was a publicity stunt.
Albie
Esparza, a San Francisco Police spokeswoman, said: ?That’s pretty
effective software, I would say.
“Criminals are opportunistic.But I’m sure even criminals won’t take a
chance if they know that there’s a tracking device.”
Toure was later charged with theft and possession of stolen property after the
intern identified him as the thief. He will appear in court at a later date.
An Apple spokesman was unavailable for comment.
