Police use GPS technology to find missing Hubbard Township females

Staff report

HUBBARD

Hubbard Township police, a tow-truck driver and technology found a girl and autistic woman who walked into the woods Wednesday night and got lost.

About a dozen volunteer searchers also were on their way to look for the two.

Kristina Getts, 22, and Hailey Zanolli, 10, both of Stoneybrook Village Mobile Home Park, were reported missing at 7:30 p.m., and they were found one hour later.

Zanolli’s mother told police she called her daughter on her daughter’s cellphone, while she was still in the woods. So, police contacted Trumbull 911 to have dispatchers use the phone’s GPS technology to get her location.

Police received GPS coordinates indicating their location at a specific spot in woods off West Liberty Street.

Officers from the Hubbard Township Police Department and a driver from C&C Towing entered the woods there and heard the voices of the two females, allowing them to be found and taken safely from the area, according to a Hubbard Township police report.

JR Watson of Watson’s Towing was on his way with about 10 people ready to help look for the missing pair, and several other people also were preparing to look, police said.

Ernie Cook, Trumbull 911 director, said the technology the 911 operators used – called Phase 2 – has been available in Trumbull County for 18 months.

Wednesday night’s example shows why that technology is so important, Cook said. There were examples in the years before of people not being found.

One example was a man, 71, whose car went off the road on Logan Avenue in Liberty Township in 2011, but he was trapped in the car. He called 911, but he didn’t know where he was.

At the time, technology only allowed his location to be narrowed down to one of the three sides of a cellphone tower.

He was found when it was getting dark, because his headlights were observable by a neighbor on Logan.