The guns used in the firefighter ambush that killed Lt. Mike Chiapperini, 43 and Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, were legally purchased but stolen according to the attorney of the woman arrested in connection with the firearms used.
However, evidence suggests that the gun buyer purchased the gun by supplying false statements to the gun shop.
REECE, N.Y. -- A 24-year-old woman was arrested Friday in connection with two of the firearms used in the Christmas Eve shooting of four volunteer firefighters.http://www.usatoday.com/...Around 1:40 p.m., New York State Police, Webster Police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives descended on the home where Dawn Nguyen and her mother, Dawn Welsher, were staying. Nguyen was taken out of the home in handcuffs.[...]
U.S. Attorney William Hochul Jr. said at a 4 p.m. ET press conference that Nguyen bought the guns on June 6, 2010, from a Gander Mountain store in Henrietta, south of Rochester. He said she bought them on behalf of William Spengler Jr., a former neighbor in Webster who set fire to his home and ambushed first responders before dawn Monday.
As as a convicted felon, Spengler was banned from owning guns. He served 17 years in state prison for killing his grandmother with a hammer in 1980. Nguyen lived next door to Spengler in 2008, in the house where he killed his grandmother.
"It is sometimes referred to acting as a 'straw purchaser' and that is exactly what today's complaint alleges," Hochul said.
Hochul indicated that in his rambling suicide note, Spengler revealed how he got the guns.
Nguyen's lawyer, Dave Palmiere, said that his client "purchased the weapons legally, and they were stolen," but that she doesn't recall whether she reported the theft to police.
Thanks for this update SoCalSal.
WEBSTER, N.Y. - The neighbor of a convicted felon who ambushed firefighters on Christmas Eve, killing two, bought the guns for him and lied to the seller, knowing that he wasn't allowed to have them, authorities said Friday.http://www.washingtonpost.com/...William Spengler had picked out the semiautomatic rifle and shotgun used in the ambush and went to the sporting goods store with the neighbor when she bought them for him, U.S. Attorney William Hochul said.
The neighbor, Dawn Nguyen of Rochester, was arrested Friday. She faces a federal charge of knowingly making a false statement for signing a form indicating she would be the legal owner of the guns, Hochul said. She also was charged with a state count of filing a falsified business record, State Police Senior Investigator James Newell said.