A Lincoln man was arrested on multiple gun charges last weekend after a resident called police to report hearing gunshots shortly before midnight on Saturday, March 15.
Police checked the area of South Great Road near the Weston town line and discovered two men in a car parked in the lot at the entrance to the Twin Pond conservation trails just east of Weston Nurseries. An officer “observed one of the AK47-variant magazines in center console” and detained one of the occupants, though the other one fled, according to Police Chief Sean Kennedy. The suspect couldn’t be located despite a search involving Weston, Wayland, and Concord police assisted by a drone and a police dog from the Massachusetts State Police.
Police arrested David Hoch, 20, of 149 Tower Rd. in Lincoln and charged him with two counts of possession of a large-capacity firearm, three counts of possession of large-capacity feeding magazine, two counts of possessing a firearm without a firearms ID card, two counts of possessing ammunition without a firearms ID card, and one count of possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number.
On March 16, police posted a picture of the escaped suspect taken with a police body camera on the department’s Instagram page on March 16 and identified him as Justin Warner, of Clay, N.Y. saying they believed he as no longer in the immediate area. However, he turned himself in to Lincoln police around midday on Monday and was charged with the same offenses as Hoch.
Kennedy said he didn’t know who owned the guns or why they were fired Saturday night.
Both men will be assigned a court date during their arrangement at Concord District Court. State law calls for a prison term of two and a half to ten years on each count of unlawfully possessing a large-capacity firearm, and one to two and a half years for the untraceable firearm charge.