CLAY, NY — An ill-timed, inadvertent 911 call led police to three suspects overheard planning break-ins upstate.

Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh says police already looking for a suspicious person got the unlikely assist when one of the men “pocket dialed” his cellphone’s emergency number while driving near the scene of an earlier heist.

As a dispatcher relayed the conversation to deputies, the men discussed their plans, described their surroundings and even commented, “there go the cops now.”

They face grand-larceny and stolen-property charges.