Schramms Ammo & Weapons plies its trade out of a Sunnyvale storefront, but the official headquarters listed on state incorporation papers is owner Jeffrey Schramm's home on Park Chase Circle in Mesquite. It probably goes without saying that Schramm takes his work home with him and keeps a small arsenal of guns in his house.
Nearly a dozen of those guns -- four pistols (one with a silencer), one rifle and five machine guns -- went missing on the afternoon of February 19. Five people, all in their late teens and early 20s, were eventually arrested and charged in Dallas County for burglary or weapons theft. All those cases remain open.
Their legal problems got a bit worse on Tuesday when they and four alleged accomplices were hit with federal weapons charges.
Yesterday's federal indictment mainly just lists the charges and identifies the relatively youthful conspirators as Dalton Bradshaw, 18; Raven Crosslin, 19; David Arce, 19; Leslie Sanchez, 20; Laura Rodriguez, 18; Lee Jones, 22; Kenneth Pagan, 21; Alex Prado, 25; and Ivan Rojas, 26. It provides precious little detail about their alleged crime.
Luckily, documents from the Mesquite Police Department are a bit more enlightening. Schramm, it seems, has a German shepherd and another large dog at his home that use a doggy door to travel between his kitchen and backyard. According to a report, Crosslin and Bradshaw used the opening to enter Schramm's house and steal his guns while Arce, Sanchez and Rodriguez waited in the car. (The other four came into the picture later and are charged with possessing stolen guns).
They were lucky. Schramm's alarm wasn't set, and his dogs seem to have been elsewhere. But luck or skill, the burglary was a success. They snatched a carload of guns and got away clean.
Their luck ran out three days later when Crosslin sold one of the pistols for $130 to an acquaintance who works security at Town East Mall. The security guard turned the gun over to police and told officers that Crosslin had stolen it. He had said as much when they were discussing the sale: he and another man had crawled through a doggy door and taken "a lot of Mac-11's and 9-mms."
The rest have already bonded out, but Crosslin and Bradshaw remain in Dallas County jail, where they have had ample opportunity to mull the awe-inspiring stupidity of crawling through the doggy door of a Texas gun dealer. Jail, come to think of it, is a pretty good outcome.
