Hinsdale Police used a built-in electronic locating service to find a stolen computer and arrest a suspect, police said Thursday.
Police responded Wednesday to a report of a stolen Apple MacBook Pro from an office in a building at 15 Spinning Wheel drive. The owner had left the device in a conference room for about a half an hour while he went to lunch, police said. When he returned, the computer, valued at $4,500, was missing.
Police immediately activated the electronic locating service and discovered that it was being used at or near the 10 block of Normandy drive in Addison. About 5 p.m. officers from Hinsdale and Addison Police Departments went to the location and arrested a man as he was trying to flee out the rear door of a residence, police said. The man was barefoot and holding the 17-inch stolen Macbook Pro in hand while he fled, police said.
Richard Leon, 59, of the 100 block of S. Villa Ave., Addison, was charged with one felony count of burglary, and one felony count of theft and taken to the DuPage County Jail, Hinsdale police said. Police said Leon had not been authorized to be in the building where the theft occurred.
Hinsdale detective Joseph Rauen said he wants the public to be aware that locating services are pre-installed on many Apple products, including iPhones and iPads. He said it is important that owners of these devices become familiar with and activate the services. There also are now after-market software applications that can allow Windows PC users to do the same, he said.
The locating services provide the owner the ability to see the physical location of the device after it has been misplaced or stolen.
This is the second time in the past six months that Hinsdale police have used the locating technology to make an arrest. On Oct. 14 police located a vehicle stolen from a gas station on Ogden Avenue. They were able to find the car and make the arrest after it was learned that the vehicle owner’s Apple iPhone also was missing and was inside the car.
Deputy Chief Mark Wodka said Rauen has had extensive training in computer forensics and also is a member of a specialized investigative unit in DuPage County.
