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Police melt down guns
Illegal items thrown into Severstal furnace
By JOE GORMAN Tribune Chronicle
POSTED: June 5, 2010
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 Tribune
Chronicle / Joe Gorman
Warren police Lt. Tom Skoczylas sifts through a crate of guns seized by the
department over three years just before they are melted on Friday at
Severstal Steel in Warren. Most of the 250 guns Warren police tossed into
the flames were confiscated in carrying a concealed weapon, having weapons
while under disability or felonious assault charges. |
WARREN - Someone someday may have a part of a sawed off shotgun seized by
city police in March 2009 in their car or another product that uses steel.
The shotgun was one of hundreds of guns and other accessories once belonging
to the area criminal element that was thrown into one of the blast furnaces
at Severstal Steel on Friday to be melted down and ultimately used in the
production of steel.
The Youngstown office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives, the Trumbull Ashtabula Group drug task force, Trumbull County
Sheriff's Office, Lordstown Police Department and Warren Police Department
all brought things to feed to the furnace.
Besides the guns, there were knives, brass knuckles, drugs, elaborate bongs,
syringes and equipment used to warm, grow and light marijuana plants.
Lt. Tom Skoczylas of the Warren Police Department said his department
brought 250 guns to the melt, the oldest going back to 1998. Included in
that were at least a dozen AK-47 type assault rifles, as well as eight to 10
sawed-off shotguns and several 9 mm Tec 9s.
Skoczylas said the guns no longer are needed for evidence, which is why they
were destroyed.
None of the guns destroyed Friday were used in any of the city's homicides.
Most of those guns were the results for carrying a concealed weapon, having
weapons while under disability or felonious assault.
Guns destroyed by the ATF were for firearms offenses such as a felony
possession of a firearm or possession of a sawed off shotgun.
Lt. Jeff Orr of the Trumbull County Sheriff's Office, the head of TAG, said
this is the second time within a month TAG has destroyed evidence it no
longer needs. He said they also destroyed drugs last month taken in several
raids at V&M Star Steel in Youngstown.
A lot of the drugs destroyed Friday were acquired during a giveaway of
prescription medicine in May sponsored by the Alliance for the Prevention of
Substance Abuse, Orr said. A court order was needed to destroy them, he
said.
The Lordstown Police Department contributed two shotguns and a rifle that
were seized in 2009 to the furnace as well.
Most of the guns did not have evidence tags on them anymore, but one that
did was a sawed off .12-gauge shotgun taken by then Sgt. Martin Gargas of
the Warren Police Department in March of 2009 during a traffic stop from a
white Grand Am. A record of the case could not be found in Municipal Court
files.
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