MISSOURI COMPUTERS STOLEN Woman Turns In Boy For School Theft - Kansas City News Story - KCTV Kansas City:

Woman Turns In Boy For School Theft
Mother Brings Daughter's Boyfriend To KC Police

POSTED: 6:25 am CDT August 7, 2009
UPDATED: 2:13 pm CDT August 7, 2009

SEE VIDEO............

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A mother turned in her daughter's boyfriend for stealing from a school after watching surveillance video online.

Police originally thought the thefts were done by a family after surveillance video showed what looked like a man and a boy enter the Burke Elementary and leave with items and later meet two females outside the school.

However, since the woman turned in her daughter's 17-year-old boyfriend, they have learned that it was not a family who stole from the school in the Hickman Mills School District.

Police said the older teen told them they were at the school to play basketball, and when they got bored, two of them started peering in the windows and trying doors until they forced one open.

Police said that it is refreshing to have someone willing to stand up and turn someone in.

"This is very refreshing to us because we hear so much about people not wanting to call police, not wanting to cooperate," Kansas City police Capt. Rich Lockhart said.

The teen allegedly took teachers' computers from the school, with important grade and student information on them. Police said the teen told them he could not get the computers to work, so he dumped them near railroad tracks. Police expect the computers are probably nowhere to be found anymore.

After a call to police tips hotline, police came to the girlfriend's house and didn't find any computers. However, on Tuesday the mother of the girlfriend went to police to tell them who she saw on the video.

"It's disrespectful to her and to her home to bring that into her home," Lockhart said.

Police said have now identified the teen and the others on the surveillance film. They have also identified the others in the film, believed to be neighborhood kids.

The woman who precipitated that confession said she knew her only reward was in her conscience.

"Most people have that sense of right and wrong," Lockhart said. "They don't want criminal activity going on in their homes. They really don't want it going on in their neighborhoods, and this woman was just starting at that very grass roots level."

Police have yet to forward their information to prosecutors but expect eventual charges against that 17-year-old, considered an adult in Missouri, and against the juvenile girl who was allegedly inside with him.