LILBURN, Ga. — One of the Lilburn Police Department’s newest K-9s is being credited with the capture of three burglary suspects who ran into the woods.
Channel 2 Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson was in Lilburn, where police say the suspects went to great lengths to steal valuable metal.
Police told Johnson that when K-9 Officer Elektra got the call, it was about 3 a.m. and pitch black in the woods.
The three suspects tried hiding out but police say they didn’t get very far.
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“This was our first time,” Officer K. Fields, Lilburn police, told Channel 2 Action News.
Four months of training came down to one moment in the dark.
On video from Fields’ body camera, you can hear Fields tell the suspects that they’d “better come out, you’re gonna get dog bit.”
K-9 Elektra and Field had never worked a real search together, but that all changed last Thursday morning.
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Police said the three suspects abandoned bins full of stolen copper and vanished into the woods behind the Widenation Recycling facility on Arcado Road.
“They dropped the items immediately on the ground and took off in the woods,” Fields said.
The Lilburn Police Department told Channel 2 Action News that the burglary suspects tore through a chain-link fence and punched a hole through the building’s wall to get $3,500 worth of copper pipes.
Fields unleashed Elektra, who tracked the first suspect through the darkness at 3 a.m. and bit him before he surrendered.
Then came a creek.
“I was like, hey, get on my shoulders, we got to go,” Fields said.
Fields had to carry the nearly two-year-old Belgian Malinois across the water, where Elektra was able to pick up the scent again and lead her to the suspects’ abandoned boots.
“She did a wonderful job, especially when we had to cross the creek,” Fields said.
A second suspect was found hiding under bushes while police arrested a third waiting in a getaway car at a nearby towing company.
For Elektra, who has only been with Lilburn police for three months, the night proved to the department that she was ready.
“Every time she gets out of the car, she’s ready to go. She’s not moping around. She just wants to go to work,” Fields said.
Police also said the suspect who Elektra bit was not seriously injured.
All three are in jail without bond.
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