Officers of a suburban county on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, received a dispatch on 9 April from a man staying at his nephew’s house who heard the noises and the closing of the bathroom door. Believing there was a potential burglar present, he called the police. A few minutes later, police arrived and surrounded the house, requesting a canine assist. Inside, officers reported hearing “rustling” from the bathroom. After about 10 minutes of calling out for the suspect to surrender and only hearing the “rustling” get louder, the officers breached the bathroom – only to find the robotic vacuum trapped there.

The entire incident in Washington county was captured on the officer’s body camera. Posted footage showed the abridged incident, including audio of the dispatch and body cam videos. The tense moments before the confrontation show the police yelling throughout the house: “Last chance … come out now or you’re going to get bit!” Guns drawn, the officers entered the bathroom. But all of the suspicion quickly turned to laughter when the culprit was spotted: a Roomba, still hard at work cleaning. One officer exclaimed: “There’s the bad guy!”

All good stories are made into movies, right? Here's a little more from the infamous Roomba Burglary. Thanks @BeavertonPolice & @WCCCA for supplying the video and audio! pic.twitter.com/lBetqS10ED — WCSO Oregon (@WCSOOregon) April 11, 2019

“Every situation, when you go into it, you treat it as if it’s real. This one had a lot of indication that it was,” said Daniel DiPetro, communications sergeant of Oregon’s Washington county sheriff’s department told the Guardian. “For all indications, we’re suspecting it’s a person inside there.”

The vacuum’s cycle startled the out-of-town uncle, who was unaware of a pre-programmed cleaning at 1.30pm.

“It was, from what I understand [by] talking to people on the call, just a laugh out loud moment. You can’t believe that you were completely almost duped. It’s funny. People on the call, they had a great laugh about it,” DiPetro said. “It made their day.”

Later, the sheriff’s department shared the hilarious incident on their social media pages to the delight of their citizens. “As a community, everyone was laughing. We’re having a lot of fun with it,” said DiPetro. The saga even gained them a comment tweet from iRobot, the creator of Roomba: “If cleaning dirt is a crime, #Roomba is guilty as charged.”

DiPetro characterized the sentiment of the incident this way: “It’s actually brought a positive story out that everyone can just laugh at. We see a lot of things every day where we don’t get to laugh or we don’t get that great outcome that can make everyone smile. So this is something that’s brought a positive atmosphere to the sheriff’s office.”