Florida Hotel Thieves Busted After Pocket Dialing Front Desk

Perhaps only the occasional horrors of AutoCorrect top the accidental pocket dial as the greatest nightmare of modern cellphone use. There's nothing worse than calling a person without knowing it. Especially if you happen to be talking about that person at the time.

For two thieves in Naples, Florida, a pocket dial actually put them behind bars.

According to WBBH, on November 18, a clerk was working at the InnPlace Hotel on the swanky Fifth Avenue in Naples. A woman wearing gray sweats, dark sunglasses, and a black bandana covering her mouth came in and suggested that she had a weapon in the pocket of her hoodie. She then asked for all the cash in the register, and the clerk complied. The robber then made the clerk lay on the floor until she left the hotel.

After the robbery, the clerk called police on her cellphone, but stopped to answer the hotel phone when it rang. No one answered, but she heard two women discussing the robbery in the background. The clerk recognized both voices. One, as the robber she just dealt with, and another as Ashlie Alewine, a former 22-year-old employee who had just been fired a few days before.

Detectives collected video surveillance of the robbery, and discovered that a cellphone belonging to a Shelby Alewine had called the hotel shortly after the robbery. Alewine, Ashlie's mother, said she sometimes shared the phone with family members.

Detectives then pinned Shelby's other daughter Nakilya Wright, 18, as the actual robber. She admitted to police that she used the stolen funds to feed her drug habit. Ashlie Alewine was arrested as an accomplice.

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