SHERWOOD, OR (KPTV) -
A local teen's cell phone was stolen at a Sherwood movie theater, but an iPhone app helped her find the culprit Monday, according to police.
As it turned out, the suspect hid the phone between insulation in a theater wall, Sherwood police said.
It happened late Monday night at the Regal Cinemas on 15995 SW Tualatin Sherwood Rd.
Elizabeth Curtiss and friend Annika Anderson said they were about to drive home after they couldn't find the cell phone, when Anderson remembered something she had once heard about how to find a lost iPhone.
"I thought oh my gosh, I think there's an app for that, and we downloaded it right away," said Annika Anderson.
Sure enough, the app worked.
"We could see a satellite view of the cinemas, and the signal coming from my phone wasn't in the theater we were in, it was over somewhere else and it was moving around," Curtiss said.
The teens tried to get back into the theater, but it was closed and employees wouldn't let them back in. So, the two called police for help.
Once back inside Regal Cinemas and with the law on their side, the problem then became the puzzling location the app was telling them to search for the phone.
"It was telling us the phone was on the wall, and we were like ‘how is it on the wall?'" Anderson said.
Once they called the phone though, it all made more sense.
"I put my hands on the wall, I was like, ‘the wall is vibrating it's in the wall,' so then the police officer came over and ripped the wall back, and there was the phone sitting right there," Anderson said.
Sherwood police said it appears the suspect, 35-year-old Pedro Figueroa, a construction worker at the theater, swiped the phone from Curtiss' seat, and hid it behind some insulation in the walls.
Police said he later confessed, and was arrested.
Regal Cinemas officially has no comment about the incident.
It's not known if Figueroa has ever done this before, or if he was simply hiding the phone to avoid arrest.
Figueroa remains in the Washington County jail on theft charges.
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