Boy calls 911 on 3 home invaders

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (WSVN) -- Police have arrested three people accused of breaking into a home while an 11-year-old boy was inside.

It was around dinnertime Thursday when police officers surrounded the home to rescue the boy after he called 911 on the three teenagers who had entered the home to ransack the place in search of items to steal. His father had just stepped out for a few minutes. "Are you alone inside the house," asked the 911 operator.

"Yes," whispered Luis.

He tucked himself behind some drawers under his bed, in his bedroom. "Is the person inside the house?" said the 911 operator.

"Yes, ma'am."

His dad had left their Johnson Street home five minutes earlier to grab dinner for the two of them. "I was watching TV. I went to get something to drink when I saw someone throw a hammer through a window."

He called his father after he heard glass break. "That's when he called me," said Luis Gutierrez, the father of the boy. "He said, 'Dad, there's someone knocking in front of our house, very hard,' and I said, 'Do not open that door,' and then, a minute a later, he said, 'Dad, someone broke a window.' I said, 'Which window?' He said, 'The Kitchen window,' and I said, 'Call 911.'"

The 11-year-old grabbed his dog Cookie, dove into his hiding spot and dialed. "What are you doing?" asked the operator.

"Hiding," said the boy.

"First, I thought it was two people," recalled Luis, "but then there actually was three. They were yelling across the room ... I couldn't really hear them. I had to whisper to the operator, so I wouldn't get caught."

While the boy bravely kept quiet, out of sight and hearing range, police said the three intruders ransacked the home, even tearing up his new fifth grade graduation award.

His father also called 911 as he hurried home. "I felt like I was driving from here to Orlando," Gutierrez said. "When the operator told me he was on the other line with another operator, that's when she told me to calm down."

Meanwhile the boy patiently waited for police. "Are the cops here?" he asked the operator.

"They're outside. I want you to stay on the phone."

After six minutes or so, officers crept up to the boy's bedroom window and tapped on the glass. "I jumped up, and they caught me," said the boy, and they just ran over there."

Once police officers lifted that child out of the bedroom window, they took him over to his father who had already arrived at the scene.

Police officers said this boy did everything right. Though the burglars fled the scene, police eventually caught up with them and all three were arrested.

The boy was not hurt. The family also got all the jewelry the teens stole away with.

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