Jalen Godard allegedly called police as the victim of a stolen truck, then watched the whole complaint turn around on him.
The 29-year-old Odenton man contacted Howard County police Thursday morning after his truck was taken around 5:44 a.m., but officers quickly connected the call to a Verizon burglary reported minutes earlier near the same spot.
Howard County police later released body-camera footage from the responding officers along with surveillance video from the store.
“Man, someone took my truck,” Godard told the officer in the footage.
The officer immediately asked how the vehicle had disappeared. “Did you leave it here running?” the officer questioned. “I was at McDonald’s,” Godard answered.
Don't you hate it when your car gets stolen while you're committing a burglary?
Great work by PFC Buchanan connecting the dots to the burglary across the street when this suspect called to report his car was stolen.
Karma, indeed. pic.twitter.com/TzihxyKjXH
— Howard County Police Department (@HCPDNews) July 2, 2026
That explanation placed Godard near the Verizon store, where a broken window had left behind a clue officers could see on him.
Police found blood at the smashed window, and the officer noticed blood on Godard’s hands during the stolen-truck call.
“Let me just see your hands real quick. Let me see this hand,” the officer asked. The hand check quickly changed the tone of the encounter.
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“All right, put your hands behind your back for me,” the officer added.
The officer then told Godard he had blood all over himself. Godard denied being inside the Verizon, but store footage showed a burglar who appeared to closely resemble him.
“So, the gig’s up. It’s whether you want to be honest about stuff or not,” the officer told him.
Godard kept denying that he had robbed the store, and the officer laughed at the timing of the stolen truck.
“That’s kind of some karma s**t right there, ain’t it?” the officer said. “Well, I left the keys in,” Godard noted.
“Yeah, that’s some karma s**t right there, dude!” the officer joked.
Godard was charged with burglary, theft and destruction of property. Howard County police leaned into the twist when the department posted the video.
“Don’t you hate it when your car gets stolen while you’re committing a burglary?” the department wrote.
The post credited PFC Buchanan with tying the vehicle call to the burglary across the street.
“Great work by PFC Buchanan connecting the dots to the burglary across the street when this suspect called to report his car was stolen,” the department added. “Karma, indeed.”
A strange getaway also complicated a burglary investigation in San Francisco, where police are looking into what may be the city’s first case of a burglary suspect using a self-driving Waymo as the escape car.
The incident, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, unfolded in January at Hot 8 Yoga in the Marina District and took less than three minutes.
Surveillance video reviewed by the Chronicle showed a suspect enter the studio, grab men’s activewear and leave quickly.
“He just stole a bunch of men’s shorts,” the studio’s manager told the Chronicle.
The suspect had not arrived in a typical getaway car. A Waymo robotaxi was outside.
The Chronicle reported that the vehicle dropped the suspect off, waited while the burglary happened and then left after the stolen items were loaded into the trunk.
Nearly six months later, police had not publicly identified or arrested anyone in connection with the case.
Investigators obtained a warrant for the vehicle’s data and the account used to request the ride, but neither produced a clear suspect, according to the Chronicle.
Police said account information may not identify the responsible person when stolen credentials or burner phones are used.
The video trail also had limits. By the time officers filed their warrant in April, Waymo no longer had interior footage from the ride, the Chronicle reported.
Exterior footage existed, but faces had been blurred for privacy reasons.
“I would think it would be easier to solve in a Waymo,” Sgt. Tim Faye told the Chronicle.
Waymo told the outlet that it does not use facial recognition and reviews law-enforcement requests to make sure they are legally valid. The company also does not publicly say how long it keeps video footage.
The Chronicle reported that the digital trail still failed to identify a suspect.
Another California burglary case ended without a getaway at all, after a suspected burglar allegedly became trapped inside the walls of a business for roughly 10 hours.
In May, Salinas officers rescued a man later identified by the Salinas Police Department as Isaac Valencia.
KSBW reported that Valencia, 29, allegedly fell from the roof of an adjacent theater around 9 p.m. the previous night and slid at least 22 feet.
Police said the discovery began when overnight officers stopped inside Brewjee Coffee Co for morning coffee near the end of their shift.
Inside the shop, officers heard “faint calls for help coming from somewhere nearby.”
Employees said they had heard similar noises earlier, but the sound had suddenly stopped.
The officers searched outside the entrance and traced the sound to what police described as “yelling” from inside a wall between the coffee shop and the neighboring theater.
Video shared by the Salinas Police Department showed Salinas Fire crews tearing through walls to reach the trapped man.
The first attempt through the coffee shop wall hit cinderblock and cement, according to police.
Firefighters then moved to the adjoining exterior wall, cutting through a large section to free Valencia.
Valencia was medically evaluated at the scene before being booked into Monterey County Jail on burglary charges. KSBW reported that his bail was set at $10,000.
The rescue operation lasted roughly two and a half hours, the outlet footage.
