Last week, Brock Ray Bunge ran into a field in suburban Los Angeles with a shotgun. He was being pursued by the LA Sheriff’s Department for allegedly attempting to kill one person and robbing two others. You might expect a story like this to end in a nasty shoot-out. But instead, you can chalk up another first for a police robot. The Sheriff’s Department deployed its robot to sneak up behind Bunge and grab his gun.
“The robot was a game changer here,” Captain Jack Ewell told the Los Angeles Times. “We didn’t have to risk a deputy’s life to disarm a very violent man.”
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Bunge had holed up in a makeshift barricade of dirt, leaves, and fencing in the Antelope Valley, a desert area outside of Los Angeles. The standoff had dragged into its seventh hour by the time the Sheriff’s Department had decided that they’d send in their $300,000 Andros robot, more often used for things like bomb disposal.
The police set up a number of distractions before sending in its robot, including yelling through a PA system and doing loud flyovers with a helicopter. Bunge, who apparently wasn’t even holding the gun, was sufficiently distracted and didn’t notice when the robot reached its claw into the makeshift barricade to snatch the weapon.
