Dearborn police use drone and thermal imaging to catch suspect

A home invasion suspect captured and charged, all with help from an eye in the sky. Dearborn police using a drone's thermal imaging to find a suspect in the middle of the night. Fox 2's Scott Wolchek joining us live in Dearborn to explain. Hi, Scott. Hey, Amy. Yeah, you know what? This drone program is pretty something, and yeah, they used it in that arrest. But first, I want you to take a look at some of this video from a little bit earlier when we were standing up on the rooftop of Dearborn police, and they launched that drone for us in the five o'clock newscast so pretty cool to see that there but yes this technology is more than just cool it is used uh in many many different types of ways and one of them was last week take a look at this video here you're going to watch some surveillance footage from this drone as it was called out at four in the morning responding to a 911 call about a possible home invasion where the suspect had ran out the door they started running around kind of near McMillan Street. So in that footage, it's using thermal imaging of the drone in real time. It was, and the guy operating the drone was able to relay to the officers, hey, the dude's hiding in the bushes. Take a listen to this as they find and capture this guy. Why is it important to send a drone out on something like that? Well, it's, it's late at night and, you know, officers can only cover so much area. It's already still hard to see at night. And so if there's someone probably, this is not the first time we've used a drone to find someone prowling around in the backyard and so without the drone with that technology you're not going to find this individual and it's dangerous yeah uh so anyways yeah so uh you know now you're taking a look at the guy who uh was captured there his name is John J. Limpia Jr. he's charged with first degree home invasion possession of burglary tools and he is also a fourth habitual offender so Amy his bond was set at uh 250,000 so uh definitely a pretty big capture right there and we'll have see how this thing plays out in court. Reporting live in Dearborn, Scott Walchek, Fox 2 News. Yeah, the technology really is pretty amazing. I know you said you got to actually go up on the roof and see it in action, but it is impressive. Yeah, it is. And you know what? It was also interesting to do a live shot doing it, Amy, because we had a police officer standing with us and they're like, okay, I can call the guy to launch it and it takes like 20 seconds. So I'm like, okay, well, the second that I start talking, call the guy and it worked out. So So, you know, some of the types of stuff we do for these live TV things, Amy, it's pretty wild. But the tech is pretty cool, too. Yeah, it is. All right. Thanks so much, Scott Wolchek.