Lawyer exposes landlord Voss who cut power and framed dad Owen over 38 cents

Roomie Reports posted a YouTube short titled "A man knocked on my law office at midnight. He didn’t want a lawyer, he wanted an outlet... #shorts." The clip centers on a felony case over 38 cents of electricity.

According to the channel’s description, the narrator was shutting off the lights in a law office at midnight when Owen pounded on the door holding his son Milo and a beeping oxygen machine. Roomie Reports states that Owen said, “Please. I don’t need a lawyer. I need an outlet.” The account continues that the door was unlocked, Owen plugged the machine into the wall, the light turned green, and Milo said, “Daddy, it stopped yelling.”

Milo is six and has needed oxygen since birth, the channel says. Power in their apartment had died 29 days earlier at 11:58 p.m. The machine had four hours of battery left. Roomie Reports recounts that landlord Leonard Voss told Owen the power company had cut service, though Owen ran an extension cord to a hallway outlet to keep the oxygen flowing. Police arrived by sunrise. Voss claimed Owen had broken into the breaker box, elevating the matter to a felony. The electricity taken that night was worth 38 cents. Owen paid $900 a month for a unit Voss could rent for $2,800, the description states.

Voss had mounted a camera above the breaker box and required tenants to download its app. “So you know I’m always watching,” he told them, according to Roomie Reports. The channel says Owen’s public defender urged a guilty plea. A conviction would have let Voss evict them for criminal activity, sending a six-year-old on oxygen into foster care. “He’s all I have,” Owen said. The lawyer answered, “Trial’s at nine. Let’s get to work.”

Roomie Reports states that at 3:12 a.m., 29 days after the outage, the narrator discovered the app deleted footage after 30 days and saved the file without telling Owen. Charging papers were then emailed to reporters under the subject line “Dad Faces Felony For 38 Cents Of Electricity To Keep Son Breathing.” The court’s livestream, which the channel says usually drew 40 viewers, reached 90,000 that morning.

At trial, the prosecutor played a 40-second clip of Owen plugging in the cord and introduced photos of the breaker box door bent and gouged by a screwdriver, according to the description. “This wasn’t desperation. This was a break-in,” the prosecutor said. The felony charge alone carried a potential five-year sentence. Voss testified he never touched the breaker box and that the camera “doesn’t lie.” He added, “Maybe if he paid his bills, his kid wouldn’t need my electricity,” Roomie Reports quotes.