Home » Malden
State Police looking for kids who keep making hoax calls to 911
By adamg on Tue, 02/26/2019 - 9:30pm
State Police report a search for a teen who'd been kidnapped and was calling 911 in Revere from the trunk of a moving car shortly before 6 p.m. ended after police realized it was the latest in a string of similar hoax calls.
While still thinking the call was legitimate, State Police brought in one of their helicopter crews to search the area along Rte. 1 north in the Revere/Saugus area for the green Honda SUV the alleged 17-year-old was in.
State Police were eventually able to triangulate the phone's location to Parkside Place in the Overlook Ridge apartment complex in Malden:
At approximately 6:15 p.m., MSP cruisers used a siren in the complex parking to see if the alleged victim could hear it, and she claimed to Revere Police that she could hear the sirens. The call disconnected two minutes later.
Further investigation by Revere PD revealed that the same trackphone number had been used twice in recent days for hoax calls in the Malden and Revere area.
All assets searched the complex at Parkside Place without finding a green Honda SUV.
Eventually Troopers and officers determined an address at Parkside Place possibly connected to the phone. Occupants at that apartment were interviewed and knew nothing about the phone, the caller, or the alleged incident.
State Police add:
Further investigation by the State Police Watch Center into two numbers affiliated with that Trackphone revealed it was used for nearly 20 hoax calls recently. In some of those calls kids could reportedly be heard in the background laughing. The investigation into the hoax is ongoing.
State Police typo
By Gary C on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 8:21am.
Not "Trackphone", it's "TracFone".
TracFone is a prepaid mobile phone service
By Ron Newman on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 6:13pm.
If a debit or credit card was used to buy minutes for it, the police should be able to subpoena those transaction records and find out who paid for those minutes. If someone paid for the minutes with cash (for instance by purchasing a "200 Minutes" card at CVS), the police may be out of luck.
The phone too
By Gary C on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 10:48am.
You can walk into a store and buy the phone and minutes for cash and the phone is all but untraceable. That's why they call them "burner" phones. If you are doing something nefarious, use it for a bit and then dump it.
they can track where the
By Frank Rizzo on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 4:04pm.
they can track where the phone was purchased then pull the video feed of who bought it.
Does every store that sells TracFones have video?
Also, you can now bring your own phone to TracFone instead of buying one of theirs.
Does any store not have video
Does any store not have video at this point?
By anon on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 9:15am.
These incidents must cost a small fortune in time and $, let alone the girl who cried wolf syndrome.
And taking resources away from other people who might need it
Some kids need to turn themselves in.
Overlook Ridge is on the Malden-Revere line
By Ron Newman on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 10:52am.
and contains a fire station that is divided in half, one part for each city.
Nope, both of the fire
Nope, both of the fire stations (yes, even the Malden one) are located in Revere. http://archive.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/10/shared_firehous...
They will get caught when one of them starts bragging about it.
On Facebook.
By jmeltzer on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 5:28pm.
End of the week at latest.
By SwirlyGrrl on Wed, 02/27/2019 - 8:17pm.
If the cops play it right and make it sound like it is worth bragging about, it then becomes a matter of basic teenage psychology.
That being: it isn't any fun if nobody knows about what you did!
In other Malden news
Truck driver challenges Orange Line bridge in Malden; bridge wins
Guy sought for making off with another man's backpack and the two laptops inside at Oak Grove
Feds say they've broken up new Brazilian gang before it could get really good at violence
It's the Orange Line's turn to fail; The trains really are just so frail
Old vs. new, tired vs. wired, rec-room paneling vs. shiny paint
Orange Line riders might feel walled in, due to signal problems in Malden