Albion Park Rail: Cops find alleged cannabis set-up on Elm street
A little girl’s prank triple-0 call has led police to her mum’s alleged hydroponic cannabis set up after the short-lived call was traced to the NSW south coast address.
Illawarra Star
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A little girl has led police directly to her mum’s alleged hydroponic pot crop, after a late night prank call to triple-0.
Around midnight on Tuesday morning, a triple-0 operator received a call from a five-year-old Albion Park Rail girl, before she terminated the call shortly after.
Lake Illawarra Police District Sergeant Peter Northey said the operator noticed something wasn’t right about the call, and dispatched police to the girl’s Elm Street home for a welfare check.
“Upon arrival police knocked on the door and weren’t able to raise anybody,” he said.
The officers then noticed a light coming from the garage around the side of the house, and decided to investigate further.
“Police have gone to the garage to check on the welfare of anyone inside, and as they’ve entered the garage they’ve found a number of cannabis plants,” he said.
Police will allege they found 15 plants growing in a hydroponic set-up in the garage of the home. After speaking to the home’s occupants, police learned the 12.10am emergency call came from a five-year-old girl.
“With a call such as this, the triple-0 operators are trained to listen out to the background and try to work out ‘is this someone needing help and they just can’t talk?’, or is it just a prank,” Inspector Northey said.
“We’ve since found (the girl) was just making a prank telephone call.”
The little girl’s mother, aged 30, is assisting police with inquiries and is expected to be charged with cultivating a small quantity of a prohibited plant following forensic testing.
Inspector Northey said in his almost two decades of policing, he hadn’t come across a situation quite as peculiar as this.
“We are grateful to remove cannabis and any prohibited drug from the streets and it’s a strange way this did occur, but we are certainly grateful to remove this from the community,” he said.
“In my 18 years of policing this is the first time that this sort of circumstance has happened.”