A Memphis man pleaded guilty Thursday in Little Rock to a federal charge of possessing one of 107 firearms stolen in January from a tractor-trailer rig that was transporting weapons to Gander Mountain stores.
U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes accepted the guilty plea from Mario Marquell Ward, and in return, prosecutors dropped a pending charge of conspiring to possess and sell stolen firearms.
In early March, a federal grand jury handed up an indictment charging both Ward and Curtis Earl Evans, also of Memphis, with conspiring to steal the guns from the trailer while it sat overnight at a roadside truck parking area on Interstate 55 in Mississippi County.
The indictment alleges that early on Jan. 11, Ward and Evans broke into the rig, which was en route from a Gander Mountain distribution center in Indiana to two Gander Mountain stores in the Houston area. The indictment alleges that the men took the stolen guns -- worth $39,264 altogether -- to Memphis to sell, and exchanged text messages throughout the day while arranging to sell them.
The stolen weapons were 93 handguns, 12 rifles and two Benelli .12-gauge shotguns.
Evans, who was accused of conducting Internet searches from Jan. 12 through Jan. 18 to find out information about the stolen guns, including their sale prices, is scheduled for a plea-change hearing on June 4.
Court records show that a sealed superseding indictment naming Ward, Evans, Markeith Deshun Thomas and another, unidentified person was handed up April 8.
Thomas, 36, also from Memphis, was arrested in late March and was held on a criminal complaint until the grand jury met in early April. The grand jury indicted both him and the unnamed fourth defendant on a charge of conspiring to possess and sell stolen firearms. The grand jury also indicted Thomas on a second charge of possessing stolen firearms.
From late December through Feb. 8, more than 80 tractor-trailer rigs were broken into in Crittenden, Mississippi and St. Francis counties, according to a federal agent's affidavit. It said the break-ins occurred along I-55 from West Memphis to north of Turrell in Crittenden County, and a stretch of Interstate 40 between Forrest City and West Memphis.
The break-ins of parked rigs have involved the theft of more than guns. The other stolen cargo, according to the affidavit, included food products, bicycles, Apple MacBook computers and Goodyear tires. It said five of the stolen computers were recovered in the Memphis.
Evans was the first to be arrested when, early on Feb. 10, a car registered to him was found parked at the edge of a field near an I-55 parking area where several semitrailers had been broken into. Inside the car were a large number of Kool-Aid Jammers and Capri Sun drinks that had been stolen from a truck destined for a Sam's Club distribution center in Searcy, the affidavit said.
It said Evans was found hiding in a ditch not far from where his car was parked, and that text messages on his cellphone linked authorities to Ward. Thomas was arrested after the Memphis Police Department received a call on Feb. 26 that he was selling a "house full" of guns for $150 apiece, the affidavit said.
Metro on 05/15/2015