Young girl calls 911 as intruder breaks in, CA cops say. Hear her ‘calm’ call
A 9-year-old girl is being praised for her bravery and calm demeanor after police say she “provided vital information” in a 911 call about a break-in at her Southern California home.
In the call, released April 7 by the Westminster Police Department, the girl can be heard telling a 911 dispatcher that someone was breaking in and “they broke the window already.”
The girl said she wasn’t sure if the person was a man or a woman because “I didn’t see them.”
She made the call from an upstairs area in the house using a cellphone, police said.
The call lasted more than four minutes and was “a stellar example of (the dispatcher) interacting with the child and the child answering questions under scary circumstances,” police said.
The break-in happened at about 6 a.m. April 3, according to police.
A 34-year-old Westminster man “smashed through a window” and went into the home before being confronted by the girl’s father, “who was in the kitchen at the time,” police said. The father used “pepper spray and was able to successfully drag the suspect out of the home,” according to police.
Officers quickly arrived on scene, found the man in the backyard of a neighboring home and arrested him in connection with residential burglary and trespassing, police said.
“I am very glad that the actions of both the nine-year-old and her father were such that kept the situation from possibly becoming much more serious,” Police Chief Darin Lenyi said in the release.
He invited the girl to become a police officer or dispatcher when she grows up.
Westminster is about a 35-mile drive southeast from downtown Los Angeles.
This story was originally published April 9, 2025 at 1:36 PM with the headline "Young girl calls 911 as intruder breaks in, CA cops say. Hear her ‘calm’ call."
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