The five-year-old called up emergency services, asked to speak to police, and then quickly disconnected

A five-year-old unintentionally narc-ed out her mum’s stash when a prank call led to police discovering the woman’s homegrown cannabis plants in Australia.

The girl made a call to New South Wales emergency services in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, asked to speak to police, and then promptly disconnected the call, Metro UK reports.

Dispatchers were concerned and sent police officers to perform a welfare check after tracing the call to the child’s home, where a knock at the front door went unanswered.

While attempting to check on the home, officers noticed a suspicious glow emanating from the garage. Further inspection revealed a garden of 15 cannabis plants being cultivated hydroponically.

“Police have gone down to the garage to check on the welfare of anybody inside. As they’ve entered the garage they’ve found a number of cannabis plants,” Lake Illawarra Police District Sergeant Peter Northey explained.

Although the call was quickly revealed to be a prank, it was too late for the child’s mother to conceal her cannabis plants.

“Whatever was said on the phone call was enough to alarm the triple-0 [Australia’s 911] operator, who decided to send police anyway to check on the welfare of the residents,” Northey added. “With a call such as this, the triple-0 operators are trained to listen out to the background to try and [verify] ‘is this someone needing help and they just can’t talk?’ or is it just a prank. We’ve since found they were just making a prank telephone call.”

Northey says the incident is unusual for the department.

“In my 18 years of policing, this is the first time that this sort of circumstance has happened, but we’re really grateful that it did happen,” he said.

The mother, age 30, co-operated with the police investigation. She was charged with cultivating prohibited plants and will appear in court on April 22. The charges carry a potential penalty of a $2,000 fine or 2 years’ imprisonment.

As for the child, she is likely facing being grounded until she reaches her teens.

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