They thought it was just going to be a normal day of storm chasing in Texas, but the Ball State storm chase immersive learning class spent the day chasing something else — thieves.
May 21 started like every other chase day. The team met in one of their hotel rooms in Amarillo, Texas, around 9 a.m. for a weather briefing.
The room next door had some members' equipment in it, and Hannah Carpenter, a junior meteorology and climatology major who is a part of the field study, recalls going in and out of the room a few times with everything being fine.
The meeting broke around 9:45 a.m., and when members went back to their rooms to pack everything up for the day, Ethan Rosuck, a junior meteorology and climatology major, noticed his iPad was gone.
A few minutes later, Russell Dresselhaus, a junior meteorology and climatology major, noticed his cellphone and charger were gone.
Then the team noticed the Wi-Fi hotspot and some money was missing too.
“We panicked and questioned how it was even possible for our stuff to get stolen from our room when we were legit in the room next door,” Rosuck said. “My head was spinning constantly, and I kept thinking that we wouldn’t get the stuff back.”
The team then filed a police report with the front desk of the hotel. While they were waiting, the team tried to locate the missing equipment.“We tried calling the phone and locating the iPad, but the iPad was turned off and phone [had] been disconnected,” Carpenter said. “Probably a half hour later, [Rosuck] got a notification on his phone that his iPad had been turned on for a few seconds and we got the exact address where it was taken to before it was turned back off.”
That location ended up being only two blocks away.
The team immediately called the police and went to the address, where they waited for the police across the street from the house where the signal was picked up.
When police got there, they searched the truck in the driveway and found the phone case, but not the phone and the Wi-Fi hotspot.
They put the suspects in handcuffs, which led to one of them ultimately showing the officers where the rest of the stuff was, Carpenter said.
Two arrests were made in total — one for the theft, and the other already had a warrant out for an arrest.
Rosuck, who was able to get his iPad back, said the experience was crazy, but working with the police was a good experience.
“The police were very cool and collected,” Rosuck said. “The two officers knew what they were doing and how to handle the situation. They answered all of our questions and helped me keep calm.”
After the arrest, officers told Rosuck the people who committed the crime had done petty theft and then traded the stolen goods for drugs.
“I felt bad for them because they live in the part of Amarillo that has a very high crime rate, and they can’t resort to anything else,” Rosuck said. “It was very different for me because of how the environment was.”
Rosuck said he had never had anything stolen from him before, and if it weren't for his phone tracker, the team probably wouldn’t have had the outcome they did.
“Sometimes burglars do stupid things that are [a] benefit to us. That benefit was the iPad being turned on briefly, and that gave me some sense of hope,” Rosuck said. “Overall, the outcome was great, and I was in relief. I’ll remember this day forever.”
The crime put the team behind 2.5 hours that day in chasing, but they later made it to Kansas, where they closed in on a storm.
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