FORT SMITH, Ark. — A group of Fort Smith teens caught two porch pirates last week who took packages from a house on S. 24th Street, and it was all caught on video.
Kylan Bethune, Noah Bice, Larry Salter, Alex Yancey, and Jordan Henderson are seniors at Northside High School in Fort Smith. They've been friends for years and usually spend their time after school at Bice's house playing video games, but on Friday, Jan. 5, the group did something a little different.
"I noticed two kids were walking down the road. And then I glanced back a few minutes later and saw the same kids running down the road. And it just looked a little bit suspicious. So, I said, 'I think those kids just stole packages,'" Kim Bice, Noah Bice's mom, said.
So, the group sprang into action.
"Larry was asking me, 'hey do you want to go get them?' I dropped the Wii remote right there and said lets go get them. We both started spirting down the street," Noah Bice said.
The boys ran through the neighborhood and found the porch pirates at a nearby apartment complex and checked where the packages were from. They said they didn't let the thieves off too easy.
"We decided to walk them back to the house they stole from with the packages, made them knock on the door and tell them what they did. And they got a lecture" Bice said.
The group said that they then proceeded to walk the porch pirates back to their home so they wouldn't steal again.
"We tried to explain to them we know you're young. You're going to do stupid stuff. Because you're teenagers. We understand, we've been there before. But why would you steal packages," Bethune said.
The friends said their main motivation for stopping the theft was helping others take the high road.
"I'd love to see someone do better than I was at that point wherever I was messing up. If I see somebody doing the same, I obviously show them the better route," Salter said.
The group said that this wouldn't be the last time they would stop a crime, if the opportunity presented itself again.
"What we decided is just like as soon as that happened, we just want to help as soon as we see anything else" Bice said.
The friends said that, to them, it was just a normal day.
"We went and played basketball. Like nothing like that happening. That's why it just felt like a regular day. It didn't change our plans at all," Bethune said.
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