Mobile Surveillance App Prompts Homeowner to Call Cops and Calvary

This could have easily been a story of a “father shot and killed responding to burglary at daughter’s home”.

A Tampa, FL homeowner received a notification from her mobile surveillance app Tuesday alerting her to movement in her home on W North B Street.

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Tampa police spokesman Steve Hegarty said the homeowner, 25-year-old Jordan King, wasn’t in the house at the time of the apparent break-in. But after watching the live surveillance video feed on her phone of a man with socks on his hands rifling through her belongings in her bedroom, she called 9-1-1.

She also called her father.

Jerry King, a 54-year-old military man and current (38th) president of the Tampa Rough Riders who lives about a block away from his daughter’s home, went to investigate.

When he pulled up to the house literally minutes later, he observed 23-year-old Michael Stewart walking out of his daughter’s house, police said. King told investigators he saw something in Stewart’s hand that “put him in fear,” according to a news release. King drew his weapon and fired one shot, hitting Stewart in the upper torso.

State records show Stewart was released from state prison in April after serving nearly six years for multiple counts of burglary and grand theft. On Aug. 11, Stewart was arrested by Tampa police and charged in another, unrelated burglary. He was released on $9,500 bail.

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Police reviewed the surveillance footage of the crime provided by Jordan King, and said it appeared to them Stewart was talking on or listening to a cellphone, prompting police to investigate if Stewart had an accomplice, Hegarty said.

Stewart was transported to a local hospital with serious injuries and was listed in stable condition Tuesday, police said. Police plan to charge him with crimes related to the burglary after his release.

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