A man wanted on a felony warrant tried to vanish into a mountain of laundry, but he didn't fool K-9 Maxx. Pitcairn police say the department's veteran police dog pulled his handler straight to a third-floor closet Wednesday, then alerted to movement beneath clothes piled roughly eight feet high, where the suspect had been hiding.
The Pitcairn Police Department said it was called to help a neighboring department carry out a felony warrant at a home, according to a Facebook post from the department cited by CBS News. Officers searched a building with multiple floors and rooms before K-9 Maxx keyed in on the third floor and pointed them toward a walk-in closet stacked with clothing. The department has not said what charges the man was wanted on, nor has it released his identity.
Once officers located the closet, they gave the man repeated commands to come out. He refused, and continued to not respond even as local officers issued multiple additional commands for him to exit. He was ultimately taken into custody without further incident once he was found hiding under the pile of clothes.
A Dog With Nearly Four Years on the Job
K-9 Maxx turned 5 years old this month and has spent almost four years as Pitcairn's first police dog, handling patrol and search work for both Pitcairn and neighboring Wilmerding, according to the department's Facebook page. His handler, Officer Tara Bradley Caruso, was named Officer of the Year by the Animal Friends Humane Society in September 2022, per a newsletter published by the Borough of Pitcairn. In December 2023, Maxx was also awarded a national Healthcare for K9 Heroes grant from Vested Interest in K9s, Inc., which provides medical insurance coverage for injuries sustained in the line of duty, the Town of Mountain Park has noted.
Maxx isn't the department's only working dog. Pitcairn now operates a multi-dog unit that includes K-9 Reese, who assisted a neighboring agency on August 21 in locating a stolen firearm hidden in a wooded area, the department said. Just weeks before that, on July 9, Pitcairn police deployed a K-9 to track a fleeing suspect into woods near the Wilmerding Community Center after a shots-fired call on Caldwell Avenue, an incident that ended in an apprehension and a recovered gun, according to WPXI.
How a Small Borough Funds Its K-9 Program
Pitcairn is a compact 0.51-square-mile borough roughly 12 miles east of downtown Pittsburgh, with a population of 3,032 as of 2024, according to Census Reporter. Federal data compiled by Data USA shows the borough's median household income at $36,419 with a 15.4% poverty rate, numbers that help explain why the department leans on outside support to keep its K-9 unit running. The unit relies heavily on private corporate sponsorships and community fundraising events, including annual spaghetti dinners organized by police families, to cover routine operational and nutritional costs, per the department's Facebook page.
The department has also built out technology to support its dogs in the field, establishing an unmanned aerial drone program meant to coordinate with the K-9 unit during search and rescue operations, according to the Search & Rescue Foundation. During Wednesday's warrant execution, Eastern Area Prehospital Services was on standby to provide emergency medical support, the department said in its Facebook announcement, a detail that underscores the multi-agency coordination behind even a routine-sounding closet search.
Pitcairn police have not released the suspect's name or the specific charges tied to the warrant that brought officers to the home. The case adds to a string of firearm and violent-crime incidents the small borough has handled in recent years, including a 2024 shootout that struck parked cars and a January 2025 shooting that led to an attempted homicide charge.
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