WHITE SETTLEMENT, Texas — Two months after suspects stole a vehicle, a North Texas police department used an advanced safety system to find the car and the people who took it.
On Saturday around 11:45 a.m., three White Settlement police officers made a traffic stop in Fort Worth near a Family Dollar store that resulted in two arrests, recovery of a stolen car, stolen license plates, and a stolen handgun.
In addition, the officers found illicit narcotics and drugs, fake driver's licenses, and miscellaneous drug paraphernalia, according to police.
Police arrested Erica Mardian, 31, and charged her with possession of a controlled substance (meth), fraudulent use and possession of identifying information (fake driver's licenses) and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle (stolen car). She also had a felony warrant out of Tarrant County Sheriff's Office for narcotics.
Police also arrested Bryan Kelly, 31, and charged him with unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. He also had felony warrants out of Benbrook for fraudulent use and possession of identifying information and the Texas Parole Board in Austin for a felony parole violation.
Mardian and Kelly had likely been driving the stolen car for two months and consistently changing license plates on the car, police said.
After a neighbor reported to the police that their license plates had been stolen, investigators received an alert from their Flock Safety System, a public safety operating system that uses devices to capture objective evidence as well as using machine learning to detect and deliver investigative leads to law enforcement. The system's cameras can send real-time alerts to law enforcement.
The alert came from a Flock Safety Automated License Plate Reading camera, sending officers near I.H. 30 and S. Cherry Lane. Officers found Mardian and Kelly at the Family Dollar. The stolen car will now be returned to its owner in Fort Worth, according to police.
