Handcuffed woman uses Apple Watch to summon help during a home invasion

Apple Watch Series 5 Phone Call
Apple Watch Series 5 Phone Call (Image credit: Joe Wituschek/iMore)

What you need to know

  • A woman used her Apple Watch to call for help when she was handcuffed during a home invasion.
  • The woman was able to text her mother while her attacker rummaged through her belongings.

We've heard tons of stories about Apple Watches saving lives, but they usually involve the wearable's health-related features. This time an Apple Watch helped a handcuffed woman contact her mum while a home invader rummaged through her belongings.

According to local reports, the West Milford, NJ woman came home to find a man in her room. After demanding money, the man handcuffed the woman to a bed at which point she was able to use her Apple Watch to text her mother. Police later arrived just as the man was leaving.

After being held captive for more than an hour, the victim complained she was cold sitting on the floor, according to her statements to police.This led Canning to handcuff her to a bed, leaving one of her hands free, the affidavit states, and allowed the daughter to text her mother using her watch and told her to call the police.

Amazingly, the woman's mother was upstairs throughout — seemingly unaware of what was going on.

The mother came downstairs to check on her daughter, unsure whether the message was serious. She was met by Canning who pointed the airsoft gun, which she and her daughter believed to be a lethal firearm, at her and again demanded money, records claim.

Thankfully the police were able to apprehend the man, at which point they also found car keys belonging to the woman's neighbor.

While these stories tend to involve features like the ECG app found on Apple Watch Series 6, the woman's quick thinking was enough to outsmart the home invader and save the day.

Sending and receiving messages is one of the best Apple Watch features that most people don't make enough use of. Thankfully that wasn't the case here!

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.