Does carrying a gun in the folds of your skin count as open carry or concealed? Or maybe that’s deep concealment. You might ask an unnamed 30-year-old woman in Everett, Washington to help answer that.
During the booking process, jail staff at the Snohomish County hoosegow discovered an object that resembled a handgun concealed between folds of flesh in the abdomen of a female arrestee. After drawing straws to see who had the misfortune duty of gloving up and exploring deep fat crevices for contraband, a fully-loaded Colt .25 Auto was discovered.
From a press release from the Snohomish County Jail via The Lynwood Times:
On Wednesday, October 13, at approximately 9 a.m. a 30-year-old woman was being booked into the Snohomish County Jail for suspicion of DUI and was found with a loaded semi-automatic handgun hidden in her abdomen.
During the booking process the woman arrestee was placed into a Tek84 Body Scanner, which is used to identify and reduce the instances of contraband entering the facility. The resulting body scanner image revealed the outline of a small semi-automatic handgun hidden between folds of flesh in the woman’s abdomen.
If the .25 Auto worked, and assuming a round would actually penetrated a dress shirt, it might have actually made someone mad when they figured out they’d been shot.
There’s a reason the famous Col. Cooper once wrote this:
“Carry a .25 if it makes you feel good, but do not ever load it. If you load it you may shoot it. If you shoot it you may hit somebody, and if you hit somebody, and he finds out about it, he may be very angry with you.”
Despite its poor reputation as a fight stopper, possession of the little pistol was good enough for an additional felony charge. Again, from the Snohomish County Jail via The Lynwood Times:
Washington State Patrol (WSP) was contacted, responded back to the jail, interviewed the subject, and then booked the 30-year-old woman on an additional charge of Possession of a Weapon by a Prisoner, a class C felony. The handgun was removed from the jail’s property by WSP.
Funding for the new Tek84 Body Scanner was approved by Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers last year and has been in use at the Snohomish County Jail since January of this year. The Tek84 Scanner provides an additional layer of security for the jail and helps keep both employees and inmates safe while inside the Corrections Facility.
Does anyone know if Snohomish County sells confiscated guns back to the public? Anyone interested in a slightly used Colt with a little corrosion?