A pair of puzzled men in Whittier were surprised and amused when they made a $10,000 discovery in the form of an ultrasound machine abandoned on the street.
Troy Silva was inside his restaurant on Whittier Boulevard on Friday when he got a text from his friend, Jason Barrio. The message urged him to go outside and see what his pal found.
“It was funny,” he said. “I mean, we were all laughing.”
Standing next to Barrio was a machine wrapped in plastic. After unpacking it, the men found it was a Hewlett-Packard ultrasound machine.
Confused but amused nonetheless, the two called the police to file a report. They shared that was when they learned more information about the wayward machine.
“While we’re doing this, a van pulls up with two guys in it,” Silva said. “He calls over to me … he says a homeless guy abandoned it right there. He was pushing it down the boulevard and he left it there.”
The Whittier Police Department said it checked with two local hospitals, but neither was missing the machine. An investigator later learned the machine belongs to a local doctor who had recently moved his practice from the area to another location.
That doctor said he thought he’d taken all of his equipment but when he saw an image of the found machine, he realized the movers somehow missed it.
Officers said they plan to reunite the item with its rightful owner on Tuesday.
