Police Unable To Trace Logan Co. Shooter Due To Dead Battery In Ankle Monitor

A shooting in Logan County involved a man who was wearing an ankle monitor. The problem? The battery had died weeks ago and police had no way to trace him. 

Friday, September 2nd 2022, 6:43 pm



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A shooting in Logan County involved a man who was wearing an ankle monitor. The problem? The battery had died weeks ago and police had no way to trace him. 

Area law enforcement say the problem is not uncommon.  

"We've had clients who've said I can finally sleep at night now knowing that my abuser's being monitored by someone else," said YWCA's Chief Program Officer, Angela Beatty. 

Ankle monitors can be very useful when they are working correctly. The signal they put out can be traced to withing 8 feet of the monitor. 

"You can see on that map, little ping marks? These units can send the location every minute, every two minutes. Whatever you want to set them at," explained Co-Owner of CJ's Bail Bonds, Carol Knight. 

Knight said while useful, it can lead to a false sense of security. 

"If man made it, man can break it and they're very creative," she said. 

The ankle monitors are designed to send an alert if someone tries to remove the device or if the battery is about to die. But doing a quick Google search can give people all they need to work around that. 

"People are posting videos on how to hide them and how to beat them and the problems that they can create when we don't know where they are," said Knight. 

That’s exactly what happened in Logan County on Tuesday. Sheriff Devereaux said Delbert Middleton’s monitor had died a month before and they were actively searching for him. 

"Lost contact with his bondsman and basically he's been on the run," said Sheriff Devereaux. "The family was scared to death that something like this was going to happen." 

It's not the first time he's seen one fail. 

"We found the monitor, called the monitoring company and they looked back and said, ‘yeah it looked like it was cutoff at 6 in the morning yesterday,’ [I don’t know] why law enforcement wasn’t contacted," said Sheriff Devereaux. 

"GPS many times is your key to the jail and you have to keep that thought in your mind you've got to be cooperative with it," Knight said. 

 


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