Seventy-two-year-old Ridgely Whitmore Brown owned a number of firearms. But after inviting a woman he met at a Stamford, Connecticut strip club back to his home last year, six of the guns went missing. And the attorney didn’t report the theft as he’s required to do under Connecticut law.
Brown, it seems, was the trusting type.
While he has a gun safe, he told police that while cleaning and working on the guns, he would leave his pistols on the kitchen table when the woman was visiting. When he left to run errands, he noticed the guns were missing upon his return.
Oh. Also . . .
Brown also said he was concerned about telling police about the guns because he believed that the man who was caught with his gun in Bridgeport, the woman he met at [the strip club] and her sister’s boyfriend are gang members and believes they were involved in the drive-by shooting death of 12-year-old Clinton Howell last December in Bridgeport and other deaths, the affidavit said.
He might have also been reluctant to make public the fact that he was “dating” someone he met in a strip club.
Something finally induced Brown to report the stolen guns on July 9. But two days later, one of his missing firearms was used by a perp to shoot at an officer during an arrest.
Capt. Richard Conklin said police at the scene of the attempted shooting of narcotics officer Bryan Cooper at Seaton Road on Tuesday figured out that the Smith & Wesson Bodyguard, five-shot revolver used by the suspect had been reported stolen by Brown a day or two before the shots were fired. Police said Cooper was nearly shot by Lawrence Moore, 30, who was about to be busted for possession of fentanyl, crack cocaine and marijuana. He is being held on a $1,050,000 court-appearance bond.
Now, as a result of the delay in reporting the theft (he had 72 hours to do so after discovering they were stolen), Brown is facing charges of failure to report as well as reckless endangerment.
As for his carry permit and other firearms . . .
As well as his state permit to carry a gun being revoked with Brown’s arrest, police seized another 19 pistols and long guns in his possession, Conklin said.