A Couple of Pizza Thieves Were Caught Red Handed by Bo, a 10-Month-Old Bloodhound, Who Just Joined the Police Force

Bo is a very good boy.

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A new officer joined the Gastonia (N.C.) Police Department, and he’s already closed his third straight case after tracking down the person who allegedly robbed a DoorDash driver. Bo, a 10-month-old Bloodhound, became part of the force last October, making him the seventh member of the department’s K9 unit.

According to a release from the Gastonia Police Department, just after 11 a.m. on December 28, a DoorDash driver reported that she’d been robbed. Bo was brought to the crime scene, got a good whiff of the suspect’s scent, and then followed it “through heavy foot traffic and other distractions” right to the alleged robber’s door.

In the police report, the stolen property is listed as a Pizza Hut Big Box Meal, which contained pizza, wings, and breadsticks, and those items were valued at $30. (The report also lists the stolen property as “recovered,” which suggests that Bo found the alleged perp before he had a chance to crack open the pizza box.) An 18-year-old Gastonia resident and another unnamed person in the same house were both arrested and charged with Common Law Robbery.

Bo has also successfully tracked two people who had been reported missing in Gastonia, a city of about 80,000 residents located about 20 miles west of Charlotte. On October 4, Bo used the scent on a pillowcase to locate an elderly man who had walked away from his nursing home. Bo found the man a few blocks from the facility, and he was returned unharmed. In November, Bo again sniffed a pillowcase before tracking a child who had been reported missing; the child was located in a nearby neighborhood.

WCNC reports that it cost about $5,000 to bring Bo from Kentucky, where he was born, to North Carolina, and that cost was covered by a donation from the Jimmy Ryce Center. It costs about $2,000 annually to care for Bo (and hopefully, a significant amount of that money goes to buying treats for this special doggo).

Bo is the only bloodhound that is part of the Gastonia Police Department’s K9 unit. His four-legged coworkers include three Belgian Malinois, two German Shepherds, and one Dutch Shepherd.