WTHR |Suspects questioned in Don's Guns heist

Suspects questioned in Don's Guns heist

Sandra Chapman/Eyewitness News

Indianapolis - Three teens, including 13-year-old twin brothers, are in custody following the robbery of a west side gun store Friday.

Within eleven hours of a smash-and-grab at Don's Guns, federal authorities recovered several stolen weapons and apprehended the teenage suspects.

"We were able to confirm that two of the firearms that we recovered [Friday] evening were in fact taken from the burglary," said ATF Indianapolis Supervisor Paul Massock.

And police are close to identifying a third weapon after taking the twins and a 15-year-old into custody Friday overnight. The break in the case came late Friday following tips to gun shop owner, Don Davis.

Within minutes of the 6 p.m. news Friday, which broadcast of that surveillance video of the burglary, Davis says his phone began ringing.  And by 9 p.m., police were making their move.

"I just was told where to go to solve this case. I called the proper people and they went and solved the case," Davis told Eyewitness News.

The night ended with a chase and a 13-year-old crashing a white truck into a cruiser near 10th and German Church Rd.

Witnesses at the Arbors Columbia Apartments say they heard the crash and came out to see the white truck in the yard and two suspects running from it in different directions. They say they saw police chase those men and then they saw other officers come over to the truck and found something else.
"It was a bunch of guns. It was a bunch of guns in the car," said Tyra Murdock, a witness.

Just blocks away, in the 800 block of Belhaven, the SWAT team stormed a Washington Point apartment where the boy's twin brother and the 15-year old were arrested.

Evidence at both scenes was linked to the robbery at Don's Guns.

"The suspect vehicle obviously was our truck that we seen leaving the scene," said Detective John Walls.

"They called us last night and we worked until after one o'clock to make sure that we could identify four guns that were stolen. That's good enough to put them in jail," added Davis.
 
Davis is including the AR-15 semi-automatic seen taken in the video in his totals, but it's unclear if police have confiscated that weapon yet. He will work with his staff to inventory every gun in the store next week to try to determine exactly what was taken.

That's no easy task considering the stocked quantity and no computerized record system.

"We have to touch them, identify them by serial number and then whatever is left on the sheet, that's the guns they stole," Davis said.

With at least two - and possibly three - guns off the street now, ATF and Metro Police are working around the clock to track more suspects and guns.

(Eyewitness News reporter Emily Longnecker contributed to this story.)