A Miami Beach boy is being hailed a hero after calling 911 while intruders were ransacking his house.
The boy was home alone, hiding in a closet – and at one point one intruder was in the same closet looking for valuables, according to the boy's mother.
But the intruder never noticed the 11-year-old boy, who was hunkered down, hiding behind the closet door.
The home invasion occurred Friday morning at his house at 32nd Street and Chase Avenue in Miami Beach.
The suspects shattered the glass on the front door. The boy heard the commotion, grabbed a phone and headed for the closet.
“Hi, yes I am in Miami Beach, Florida and someone is trying to break into my house, please hurry,” he told a 911 operator.
The operator asked if he was there.
“Yes I am home, I am home alone, please hurry,” he responded.
After calling 911, the boy phoned his mom, who was out exercising at the time. She called 911 while racing home.
“Yes please, can you dispatch the police to my house? I had a break-in and my son’s in there!” she told an operator. The operator told her that police were already on the scene, and that her son had called already.
Officers arrived in enough time to arrest three suspects. Lance Riley, 20, Willie Cuyler, 20, and Terrance Young, 21, all face a charge of burglary, with Young also facing charges of third-degree grand theft and resisting an officer without violence, online Miami-Dade Corrections records said.
Young was being held on $18,500 bond, and Cuyler and Riley were each being held on $7,500 bond Friday night, the records said. It was not immediately known if the three men had attorneys.
Police said they are looking for a fourth suspect.
For his heroics, the boy earned a Miami Beach Police Department hat and pin delivered by the city’s police chief.
The 11-year-old was too shaken to be interviewed.
"He's okay, he's just in there trying to do things to get his mind off of it," said his mother, who did not want to be identified.
"I'm so thankful he's alive and he wasn't harmed," she added.
