Eureka Police arrested a Holiday Inn Saint Louis West at Six Flags hotel employee for allegedly stealing a guest Apple AirPods five months after the wireless headphones were first reported missing.
Police were called at about 1:35 p.m. July 25 to the hotel, 4901 Six Flags Road, after a 42-year-old Ballwin woman called to tell them her AirPods were being used there. The woman had stayed at the Holiday Inn on Feb. 2-3 and had notified the hotel that she was missing the earbuds, the report said.
The woman said hotel employees said they could not locate the AirPods. However, she received an alert on her phone that the headphones were being used in the 200 block of Little Ditch Crossing in Beaufort, according to the report.
She told investigators she called the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office that her headphones were in that location, but she was told they could not help her. She said she stopped receiving notifications the AirPods were being used shortly after that, the report said.
When Eureka Police spoke with the hotel’s general manager, he told them an employee who cleans rooms at the hotel lives in Beaufort. The employee, a 38-year-old Beaufort woman, was working the day police went to the hotel, and officers arrested her for alleged stealing, according to the report.
The employee told officers the general manager already asked her about the AirPods, and she told him she did not have them. She also said she had black earbuds in her car, but they were not the ones the guest reported missing, the report said.
An officer found the earbuds in the car, and he called the victim to ask her to track the AirPods’ signal. The woman said her phone was showing the headphones were in the west side of the hotel, according to the report.
Officers found the employee’s cleaning cart in the west side of the hotel. They allegedly found the AirPods and a charging station in the cart, the report said.
The employee allegedly said she didn’t know anything about the AirPods and charging station. However, when she was taken to the Police Station, she said employees often find things while cleaning rooms, and while they are supposed to turn them into the hotel’s lost and found, they often forget to, according to the report.
She also said it is Holiday Inn policy that any items not claimed after three months may be claimed by the employee who found the item, the report said.
The woman then allegedly told the investigators that she did bring the AirPods home in February However, she brought them back to the hotel after discovering she had them, but she left them in her cleaning cart instead of turning them into a manager, according to the report.
The victim came to the Police Station and the AirPods, which are valued at $249, were returned to her, the report said.
The alleged suspect was released with a summons to appear in Eureka Municipal Court for alleged stealing, Capt. Michael Werges said.