Alex Arger
Police help man, 6-year-old son find home after months on the street
Dwayne Rhodes and his son Kai have been on a really rocky road since the pandemic forced Rhodes to shut down his restaurant.
LEARN MOREPosted: 4:51 p.m. EDT Nov 3, 2023
We're always teaching kids to call 911 in any case of an emergency, and for one kid, that emergency was as simple as wanting to spread some love.
Police body camera and home surveillance footage show the moment a Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office deputy responding to a 911 call gets a heartfelt surprise instead.
Upon arriving at the Florida caller's home, Deputy Pracht knocked on its front door and then asked its homeowner Dayana Del Valle if everything was okay.
The surprised woman immediately calls her son to the front door and asks him to bring his phone once Pracht shares that he received an emergency call from the home. The deputy asks if the boy has a disconnected cell phone, to which the mom simply replies, "Yep."
"Did you call this gentleman? Did you call the police?" Del Valle asks her son.
"Well I wanted to give him a hug!" the boy responds.
"You called him to give him a hug?" she again asks.
"What, I did!" the boy says, before walking toward Pracht and saying, "I know your phone number."
Pracht fulfills the 911 call's mission and hugs the boy before explaining the real emergency rules of calling 911.
"It's for if you're in trouble, if you need help or if somebody you know is around you that's in trouble and needs help," Pracht says. "You got to be careful when you call that number, okay? Only in emergencies and if you're hurt or somebody else is hurt, your mom needs help, someone's doing something they're not supposed to do — you give us a call, okay?"
The boy apologizes and gives a fist bump to Pracht, who tells him "Don't worry about it," before heading back on patrol.
