SHAWNEE, Kan. — Police worked a burglary at an apartment complex where they say a woman’s property, including a laptop, were taken last Friday. Ever since, she’d been doing a little detective work of her own.
She helped police arrest the suspect, who they say stole from her and possibly some other’s, too. It didn’t take Shawnee police a long time to track down 22-year-old Seyyad Hosseini. Police say they found him with the victim’s laptop four days after the burglary.
Major Bill Hisle said officers have the victim herself to thank for the bust.
“Our victim, she said, ‘All my electronics are gone and I have nothing but time on my hands so I want to try to find my stuff,'” Hisle said.
Hisle said the woman constantly checked pawn shops and Craigslist to try and find her stolen items. Police say on Tuesday night, she saw an ad on Craigslist for a laptop that she was confident was hers.
“We went out and confirmed that is was in fact her laptop through serial numbers that were visible on the photographs on the Craigslist ad,” Hisle said.
That’s when they asked to woman to arrange a meeting with the “seller.” It went down in a parking lot near Shawnee Mission Medical Center.
“When that person arrived, he was immediately surrounded by police officers, was taken into custody possession of stolen property. Her laptop computer was recovered,” Hisle said.
Now that laptop is back with its rightful owner and Hosseini is charged for the theft, Shawnee detectives have turned their attention to the other items confiscated during the sting with Hosseini.
“Those other items didn’t belong to her, but he had no explanation for how he had come to obtain these items,” Hisle said.
FOX 4 wanted to hear from the victim herself, but had no luck tracking her down. Shawnee police say it would have been much harder to get the laptop back to the victim without verifying the serial number she recorded. That practice is something they urge you to do as well.
