In a bizarre incident detailed by CBS Atlanta this week, an 18-year-old girl broke into a home located in Athens, Georgia last Sunday and was found browsing Facebook on the homeowner’s laptop. After being discovered by the 33-year-old homeowner just after noon, the embarrassed girl hurriedly gathered her things, stumbled through an apology and quickly exited the home. After the intruder left the home, the homeowner checked the laptop to find the girl neglected to log out of Facebook before leaving.
The information on the social network quickly led police to the University of Georgia where the unidentified 18-year-old girl lives as a student in one of the residence halls. The photos on her Facebook profile page allowed the police to quickly locate her.
The profile page also included the student’s mobile phone number, but a call placed to her phone by police went straight to voice mail. However, a chat log was recovered from the Facebook account. It contained a conversation in which the student had invited a friend to the home and supplied the physical address as well.
Oddly enough, the homeowner also discovered that her couch was soaked in urine after the intruder rushed out of the house. As of Monday, the incident was still under investigation by the local police department and the police have yet to determine how the intruder gained access to the home. No details have been released on the name of the victim or the name of the intruder.
This isn’t the first time that Facebook has played a roll in catching a criminal. During May 2012, two men robbed an Internet cafe in Columbia, but neglected to log out of Facebook prior to executing the robbery. During July 2012, a 27-year-old man broke the conditions of his probation by leaving the state of Oregon, but was caught by police after posting his geographic location on his Facebook account.
