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The bright side: There’s one less firearm in the wrong hands, thanks to a resident of Champaign’s Holly Hill Drive, who spotted a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol in his yard while walking his dog on the afternoon of Jan. 22 and had the wherewithal to put on gloves, pick it up and contact police right away.
The dark side: One down, 18 more to go. That’s how many firearms were reported stolen to area law enforcement agencies — and remain unaccounted for — during the last two months of 2024 and the first two months of 2025.
Continuing a series now in its third year, here’s Editor Jeff D’Alessio’s latest report on what police departments and sheriff’s offices were told every time a firearm was reported stolen across the area, according to officer notes obtained by The News-Gazette via open-records request.
DECEMBER 1
It’s not the framed and signed Mike Ditka jersey that’s of immediate concern to police investigating the burglary of a Champaign man’s South Prairie Street residence.
Rather, it’s the weaponry someone made off with while ransacking his home sometime in the four days he was away, fulfilling his duties as an enlisted member of the U.S. Army:
— A Glock 43 9mm pistol with two magazines.
— A Sig Sauer P226 9mm pistol with two or three magazines.
— A semi-automatic hunting shotgun with a wooden stock and wooden forend.
— A double-barrel hunting shotgun with a wooden stock and wooden forend.
Police arrive to find doors damaged, rooms that had been rummaged through and items from dresser drawers scattered throughout a bedroom.
They collect nine DNA samples from areas throughout the home, interview neighbors, even go so far as to obtain a subpoena for Sony Interactive Entertainment, requesting information about a stolen PlayStation 5 and 55-inch TV.
The victim is unable to provide any information about potential suspects.
DECEMBER 9
Lost? Stolen? Rantoul police may never know what became of the four firearms that went missing somewhere between the Champaign County village and their intended destination — Dallas, Texas.
What is known: A woman working at a local engraving company reports shipping four firearms via UPS to a gun shop in Texas on Nov. 13. More than a week passes. Then, just before Thanksgiving, a representative of the McClelland Gun Shop calls to say that the Colt .45 and three Kimber Stainless II pistols the engraving shop did work on never made it back.
UPS’ tracking system shows the package arriving safely in Dallas, with a notation that the delivery driver attempted to drop off it off on seven occasions, only to find the gun shop closed every time.
Not true, according to the gun shop.
Finally, on Dec. 9, UPS notifies the woman that her package has been lost. A Rantoul officer follows up with UPS, reaching a claims customer service rep named Sam, who informs him that an internal investigation by the company found nothing.
“When asked,” the officer wrote in his report, “Sam advised that if any criminal activity was discovered, the company would call the appropriate law enforcement jurisdiction.”
No such call has been made.
DECEMBER 10
When a Champaign man’s semi-automatic handgun goes missing from his West John Street apartment, he points the finger at his homeless granddaughter.
Earlier that same day, he tells a responding Champaign police officer, he’d contacted the front desk at the complex, requesting police assistance in removing her from the residence, given that “her behavior had caused ongoing issues for him.”
When he made the call, he “briefly stepped out of the apartment, leaving (her) unattended,” the man tells police.
He was gone maybe five minutes, he says. It’s then that he believes his granddaughter took the gun and took off.
The man tells police that he last saw the firearm, which he believes is a .22 caliber, about three years ago — in his bedroom dresser, where he kept it stored.
Efforts to contact the granddaughter are unsuccessful.
DECEMBER 17
A Champaign man who fesses up to purchasing a firearm illegally — and possessing it without an active FOID card — now reports it stolen from his Bloomington Road residence.
That leads to the only penalty to date in CPD case No. 2024-00043705 — a state notice-to-appear ticket issued to the alleged victim for unlawful use of a weapon.
When the man last saw the turquoise Glock 38 he says he purchased “several years ago” from someone in Indiana, it was under the nightstand in the second bedroom in the residence — where his mom slept until a recent hospitalization.
The man tells police he suspects a nephew that had been staying in the apartment for the past month had a hand in staging the burglary, casting doubt on his version of what might have happened — that the nephew was only gone for five minutes while helping his grandfather track down two dogs that had gotten loose from the back yard and that he recalls seeing three males dressed in black carrying bags and heading toward the apartment.
Various cameras around the apartment are of no help, the officer wrote in his report, noting that the one on the front door was broken and the several inside were turned off.
Also reported taken: a red Nike-edition PlayStation 5 valued at $500 and four “mini-cellphones” worth a combined $350.
DECEMBER 26
After a week away from a Potomac home he owns but hasn’t been staying at, a man returns the day after Christmas to find several of his belongings — an empty laundry basket, a box filled with his old Air Force paperwork, the bottom of a toolbox — scattered outside the residence.
And there’s something else, the first clue in a bizarre case that remains unsolved: an air-conditioning unit that a week ago was attached to a window is now on the ground outside. That’s where the man suspects the burglar gained entry, he tells a responding Vermilion County sheriff’s deputy.
After a brief tour of the mayhem inside — clothes on the floor, drawers and closets rummaged through — the man tells the deputy what he knows to be missing:
— One Mossberg pump action shotgun.
— One 20-gauge break-action shotgun, make and model unknown.
— One “older firearm” that the man tells the deputy is only used as a wall ornament.
— One older black powder rifle, make and model unknown.
“It should be noted that (the man) does not have serial numbers for any of the four firearms … that he (believes) were possibly in soft-shell cases” and were valued at less than $1,000 total, the deputy wrote in his report.
Also notable: “The firearms which were stolen were all previously located underneath (the man’s) bed.”
When asked about possible suspects, the man points the finger at a former business partner he owes about $5,000.
JANUARY 2
After a Danville woman gets into an argument with her ex while parked at the Marathon gas station on East Main Street, she gets out of the vehicle and goes inside.
When she returns a short while later, he’s gone. So too is the Glock pistol she tells Danville police she kept under a back seat.
The responding officer notes that the woman “explained that she proceeded to call (her ex-boyfriend) and he advised that he would give her the firearm back if she got back together” with him.
End of report.
JANUARY 7
It’s a not-so-happy new year’s for a Danville man who’d just purchased a black Stoeger compact pistol, which he kept in the trunk of his silver Saturn.
The responding police officer would later note that the man “advised he left the vehicle unlocked (in his driveway) because he does not have any problems where he lives.”
Until now.
The man did adhere to one standard rule of properly storing a firearm: He kept it in a locked Glock pistol box and attached the key to his keychain, which he kept inside his residence.
The key is still there but the Glock box is nowhere to be found.
JANUARY 21
A Champaign woman isn’t able to tell police where exactly in Ohio the man she met on Snapchat, and invited to stay at her West Springfield Avenue apartment from Jan. 14-16, calls home.
She has a name, a phone number and a home state (of 11.88 million people) but nothing else about the chief suspect in the disappearance of the Taurus GX2 9mm pistol she purchased in July 2024.
She remembers moving it from the closet to the top drawer in her dresser, still stored in the box it came with.
But when she goes to get something else out of the drawer five days after her house guest left, and moves the box, “she stated (it) felt lighter than it should be,” the responding Champaign police officer wrote in his report.
No one else had been in the residence in the past week, the woman tells police.
JANUARY 30
It was chilly on a late Monday afternoon, so a half-hour before she was to leave for work, a Danville woman goes outside and starts her 2014 Ford Festiva, to let it warm up in the driveway for a while.
But when she returns a half-hour later, the car — and the black and blue Ruger 380 LCP pistol she kept in the center console — are gone.
The camera she installed outside her front door shows three males on foot stopping to look at the vehicle, then one of them taking off in it. They couldn’t go too far — since the woman kept the keys after pressing a button to start the engine, the car would automatically shut down after traveling 30 miles.
The Danville police officer who responds to the call conducts a quick check of Flock Safety automated license plate readers in the area but doesn’t spot the Festiva. Then, just as he’s about to clear the call, dispatch receives a report of a suspicious vehicle parked in an alley with five juveniles outside it.
By the time police arrive, they’re all gone, along with the gun. But after signing a property return sheet, the woman gets her vehicle back.
