Florida teens burglarized off-duty officer's car, police say

BUNNELL, Fla. - An off-duty Central Florida police officer found himself back on the clock Wednesday night after two teenage car burglars picked the wrong house to target. 

"I literally told the officers that showed up, I was like, ‘I did not think this was going to happen on my only day off,’" the officer, who did not want to be identified, said jokingly.

This all unfolded around 11:30 p.m. inside the Grand Reserve subdivision in Bunnell.

"I was playing video games, and I started getting alerts on my phone. And as I looked at the cameras, I see two males, one hiding behind the car, my wife's car, pulling the door handle, seeing if it was unlocked," the officer recalled.

A home surveillance video released by Bunnell police shows the officer, who works for a different agency, confronting the two teens.

"I said, ‘Hey, this is the wrong neighborhood. Obviously, there's multiple patrol vehicles in here, and you picked the wrong one,'" the officer said. 

With the help of Bunnell police officers and Flagler County sheriff's deputies, the officer helped arrest the teens. 

"They took off running and on foot. [I] hopped in my patrol vehicle, ended up going down the road, hopping out, chasing them on foot, where Flagler [deputies] ended up catching them with me," he said.

Two boys were arrested: a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old. Neither of the two lives in the subdivision, police say. FOX 35 is not naming them because of their ages. Both are facing three counts of burglary of an unoccupied conveyance. 

One of the teens admitted he was trying to commit the burglaries to find something to help pay his phone repair bill. The officer who helped nab them isn't buying it.

"They can use any excuse they want to use, but you're taking away from people that earn hard for what they have," he said. "I know that they had no remorse trying to go into people's vehicles and trying to flee from the officers that were on scene."

In total, Bunnell police say the teens burglarized at least two cars, but nothing was taken from them. They were released to their parents following their arrest.