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Ohio sheriff’s drone shines in kidnapped puppy rescue op

In a world where clicks are king, stories about drones deployed to rescue kidnapped puppies are royal – as is the Ashland County Sheriff’s officer who piloted a Hallmark-card-meets-abduction-release operation in Ohio recently. 

The saga of aerial heroics unfolded last week when a pair of perpetrators made themselves rare after paying $11,000 for four French Bulldog puppies with reportedly counterfeit cash (we’ll leave it to readers to decide which is the larger of those two crimes). Word of the scam was circulated among authorities in Holmes and nearby Ashland counties – located about midway between Cleveland and Columbus – and eventually had Sheriff’s Office Lt. Randy Wood reaching for the department drone to help the recovery effort from on high.

One of the dognappers was apprehended during a traffic stop after staging the canine heist last Tuesday. Her accomplice was later spotted by locals making an arguably insane attempt to hide with his small fortune in animated, quite likely snorting booty in a cornfield. 

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After initial searches by members of various police forces failed to flesh out the suspect, Wood jumped into action with the sheriff’s department drone on Wednesday.

“I looked at the terrain of the area and saw that it would be a good area for the drone to find him in,” said Wood, whose decade history with drones predates the sheriff’s office procuring the craft three years ago, according to WOIO TV in Cleveland, which reported the story.

Within 30 minutes of having those police drone eyes in the sky, Wood said he was able to locate the abductor and his puggy hostages (note to fleeing puppy kidnappers: corn stalks don’t part in wild movements on their own), and directed fellow cops to him to make an arrest.

“Once we start getting officers in the area and start seeing them, we can start communicating with them – you know, keep going straight, turn left there,” Wood said of using the drone to nab the suspect, free the puppies, and reunite the owners with their $11K of nasally thundering property.

Not even close to the real abductees following their traumatic ordeal

While the happy outcome makes the tale of aerial tech, outrageously priced pets, and farmland chase scenes irresistible, Wood says the quick work of the drone in helping rescue the mini-dogs was actually par for the department’s standard UAV course.

“Usually our goal is, within an hour of a phone call, to be on the scene and up in the air,” he explains, shrugging off last week’s rescue heroics as just another day’s woof.

Image: Kal Greif/Unsplash

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Author

Avatar for Bruce Crumley Bruce Crumley

Bruce Crumley is journalist and writer who has worked for Fortune, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, The Guardian, AFP, and was Paris correspondent and bureau chief for Time magazine specializing in political and terrorism reporting. He splits his time between Paris and Biarritz, and is the author of novel Maika‘i Stink Eye.

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