Stolen AirTag helps police track down Pittsburgh sexual assault suspect
A stolen Apple AirTag was used to help police track down a sexual assault and burglary suspect in Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood.
The AirTag and two dollars in cash are the only things the woman noticed had been stolen from her home in the day following the assault, according to the criminal complaint for 29-year-old Charles Willis.
The AirTag had last pinged a location behind the nearby Phipps Conservatory, according to the complaint. Police searched the area, noting there were several homeless camps in the immediate vicinity.
Officers spotted Willis on the train tracks above neighboring boundary street and took him into custody.
Apple AirTags are used to help track personal items, such as keys or luggage.
"The AirTag is interesting, because I mean, maybe he didn't know what it was," said Anthony Dimitriou, who lives a few doors down from the victim's home in Oakland, which KDKA-TV is not identifying. "Maybe he thought it was a coin or something."
The location is near the University of Pittsburgh campus, where many students taking summer classes are living, including Dimitriou.
"It makes me a little nervous," he said.
The woman went to sleep Wednesday night without clothes on, she told police. She woke up early Thursday morning to a sound and told police someone was touching her indecently, the complaint said.
The man, she said, then "quietly, quickly, and calmly" left her bed and the room. She went downstairs and saw someone outside a window that police say he'd exited through.
Police pulled prints from that window and matched them with Willis, the complaint said. The AirTag was then used to help point police toward the suspect.
"I guess taking a device known for tracking isn't the smartest thing to do, but I guess if you're going to commit a crime like that, you're not the smartest person, and you're not the best person, so I'd say he got what was coming for him," Dimitriou said.
Once arrested, the complaint said the man told police he'd been looking for money and things to salvage when he walked into the woman's room. It says the man confessed to sexually assaulting her, saying the man said he "understands what he did was wrong and that he was a weak man."
The man did not confess to taking the AirTag.
The complaint said police also have security camera footage of someone trying to break into multiple homes.
Willis is being held at Allegheny County Jail, with his bail denied. Charges against him include burglary, aggravated indecent assault, and indecent assault.
