Sherae Honeycutt

MERRIAM, Kan. — Original Post

The Merriam Police say they are able to close another case today thanks to the power of Facebook.

A 7-year-old Shawnee boy’s Taekwondo equipment disappeared a few weeks ago, and popped up in an unexpected place.

FOX4’s Sherae Honeycutt met up with Isaac Martin who is back to his karate kid way of life for a story you will only see here.

The sun was out for one of the warmest days this season, and Issac Martin was doing his favorite things.

“It’s a really good day to go bike riding,” Isaac said.

He also got to go to Taekwondo class, but for the past few weeks, that wasn’t easy to do, because he didn’t have his equipment.

“Probably because it was stolen, and I thought someone would have tooken it and kept it,” Isaac said. “It never happened to me before since my life.”

A few miles away in Merriam, Detective Rashad Casteneda cracked the case.

“There was a bunch of stuff in there that obviously wasn’t hers,” Detective Casteneda said.

A stolen car full of random stuff – trash, car chargers, bullet shells, and for some reason, some kid’s karate gear.

“I wasn’t exactly sure why it was in there, but yeah, I could tell it belonged to a little guy,” Det. Casteneda said. “I brought it back to the station, we took a picture of it, put it on Facebook, and we got a call about it about an hour later.”

Someone at Isaac’s martial arts studio, ATA Martial Arts, spotted it and made the connection.

“I was blown away,” said Isaac’s dad Jason Martin. “I was not expecting to get the gear back.”

“It’s pretty rare because there`s not a name or any identifying marks or phone numbers or serial numbers and stuff like that so its kind of hard to back track who it belongs to, so the power of social media helped us out this time for sure,” Casteneda said.

It not only helped Isaac get his gear back, but now he’s ready to get back to working on his next belt.

“I got to do my favorite thing. I got to do combat,” Issac said.

He also got a new sparring partner in Detective Casteneda.

“He obviously didn’t do anything to deserve this. Do I wish there were more happy endings? Of course I do, unfortunately that’s just not the way it goes a lot of times,” Casteneda said. “I was excited. I was really excited.”

While you might think Isaac might want to go into law enforcement when he grows up he tells FOX4 that he loves Taekwondo, but actually wants to be a scientist when he gets older.