Mother Threatens to Charge 11-Year-Old with Theft After He Steals and Destroys Her Son’s Phone

After discovering her son’s phone had been stolen from his bag at primary school, one mother used a tracking app to find it.

Her search led her to a nearby home — and into a messy situation involving multiple kids who insisted they were innocent, plus parents trying to sort out who actually took it.

“From that house, I banged on the front door and was answered by a mum,” she wrote on Reddit. “I explained that I tracked my son’s phone to this house and from there discovered her son and 2 of his friends had just been there. She calls him and then I follow her in my car to a second kids house.”

Once they arrived at the second home, the mother tried to keep it simple. She told the kids she didn’t care who took it — just hand it back and it would be over. But the children kept denying everything, swearing they had never seen the phone and knew nothing about it.

Even after the adults exchanged phone numbers, nothing was resolved — until the mother received a call from the first house. The other mom had reviewed her security footage and said it showed the child from the second house holding a phone, despite denying it.

“She has checked the security cameras from her house and discovered the kid from the second house who swore that they have never had a phone is miraculously holding a phone in the footage,” the Reddit user wrote. “This has already been sent to the dad and next minute I get a message from the guilty kids mum asking if she can come to my house.”

Not long after, the child and his mother came to the poster’s home, “teary-eyed and apologetic.” But when she asked for the phone back, the mother admitted her son had “smashed and destroyed it.”

The phone — an iPhone XE — wasn’t especially expensive, but it mattered. The single mother said it was the main way she stayed in contact with her son.

Trying to end things without escalating, the two adults discussed compensation. The other mom offered to buy a replacement immediately, but the poster suggested a simpler solution: a $100 contribution while she found a similar device on Facebook Marketplace.

Weeks passed, though, and the payment didn’t arrive. The other mother stopped replying to messages and didn’t answer calls. Frustrated, the poster warned she would report the incident and press charges against the 11-year-old for theft and destruction of property — and asked whether she would be wrong to do so.

In the end, she said the situation was resolved only after she made it clear she would involve the police. The money was transferred soon after.

“I guess I waited so long as I still want to think people will do the decent thing and didn’t want to have to go down the police road for a minor amount as they have more important things to do,” she wrote.

“At the end of the day though I’m not going to raise my son to be walked all over and to stick to your word.”