Posted on 12/13/2001 3:40:03 AM PST by harpseal
NEW HAVEN — The Westville man who allegedly stockpiled assault weapons, bullets and hand grenades at his parents' home had purchased a banned .50-caliber sniper rifle in May from a Seymour pawn shop, state police said. However, the weapon has not been found, and police won't say whether Charles Cornelius, a 31-year-old laborer, had plans for the big gun.
On Wednesday, a Superior Court judge increased bail on Cornelius, of 851 Forest Road, to $2.6 million cash, as police prepared another arrest warrant in connection with the powerful rifle.
A warrant already had been signed by a judge in Superior Court in Derby, said state police Sgt. J. Paul Vance.
Meanwhile, police still were searching for the weapon, a Barrett 82-A1, described as a long-range sniper rifle that can fire armor piercing and incendiary rounds up to 2,000 yards.
According to the Barrett Firearms Web site, the weapon, with a carrying case, costs $7,300. The scope is sold separately. Barrett is located in Murfreesboro, Tenn.
During a demonstration for Congress some time ago, a Marine sniper blasted through a manhole cover with the .50-caliber round.
"That's the big one," said Tom Diaz, who authored a study on the sale of sniper rifles for the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C. "That's the one the Marine Corps is using right now in Afghanistan and the special forces used in the Persian Gulf War. It's pretty scary."
More than a decade ago, the U.S. government sent 25 high-powered Barrett sniper rifles to a group of Muslim fighters that included Osama bin Laden.
Here, it is illegal for civilians to possess the weapon, police said.
"The only people who can legally possess it in Connecticut are police officers and the military," said Vance, the state police spokesman.
However, according to state Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, semi-automatic .50-caliber sniper rifles still can be purchased legally in the state and only an automatic version is outlawed. Lawlor said he plans to advance legislation next year that would regulate the weapons.
State police were specifically searching for the gun Tuesday when they executed a search-and-seizure warrant at 851 Forest Road, where Cornelius lived with his parents. Authorities didn't find it but did recover a cache of assault rifles, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and volumes of hate literature. The literature included manuscripts from Matt Hale's Church of the Creator, a white supremacist group that has held rallies in Wallingford.
Vance said police had no evidence that Cornelius had planned any attack with the weapons.
But it has become clear that he had a caustic animosity toward Hopkins School, an exclusive, private institution that neighbors said expelled Cornelius in the 1980s. The sprawling, wooded campus is across the street from the Cornelius home.
Cornelius attended the school from 1982 to 1987 and law enforcement and neighbors confirmed that he held a longstanding grudge. He allegedly planned to send hateful, anti-Semitic letters to a batch of alumni, sources said. It wasn't immediately clear if any letters had been sent before police arrested him Tuesday.
"Guys like this shouldn't have any guns, let alone any gun that would you allow to shoot at an armored limousine a mile away," Lawlor said. "These are the kind of people we're worried about."
Officials with the state police Special Licensing and Firearms Unit believe that Cornelius bought the sniper rifle in May 2001 after he stole the identity of a dead Pennsylvania resident. Under the name of Jason E. Johnson, Cornelius obtained birth certificates, a driver's license, Social Security card and firearms permits to complete the purchase of the gun from the Seymour Pawn Shop. The gun was illegally imported by the pawn shop from a Nevada gun dealer and turned over to Cornelius, police said.
According to Diaz, during the Gulf War, the gun took out Iraqi armored personnel carriers at a range of 1,800 yards. At least one of the rifles was found at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
"This isn't a question of gun control," Diaz said. "It's a question of national security."
My, oh, my. Now you have degrees of punishment, because some thought crimes are worse.
If I thought Kennedy would do another bridge-dive with a babe in the car; would they jail me, or Kennedy?
Maybe the author wrote it that way to shake up peoples' thoughts?
... and instigate more thought crimes for the prosecutor?
What a sick bunch of slugs.
Chris
And yes, the gun shop is at fault.
You have to ask? You of course.
Your line of reasoning disturbs me.
Arresting people because they *might* commit a crime is right out of the playbook of the KGB and the Gestapo.
And of course CT law enforcement. We have a "law" up here that allows the police to take guns away from people who have not committed and maybe even are not accused of committing any crime. The police go before a judge saying that they think someone's guns should be taken away, judge signs the order, cops come and take guns away.
It has gotten so bad up here that when a homicide with a black powder revolver happened a few days ago there were questions about why didn't the police take this guys weapons away before he committed the crime!
I'm so glad they are being rational.
Well, it sounds like they have a solid case of "premeditated mischief with intent to think incorrectly."
Of course, you got to really dig 9 months of winter, too........
middle class in the hood around here=two pickups on blocks in the front yard, up in maine it's two snowmobiles up on blocks...
heheheheheh, there's tradeoffs evedrywhere, I honestly don't think any one place has it all over any other place geographically, there's plusses and minuses but being reality based, you simply have to take politics into consideration. Mass and connecticut are abysmal in my opinion, even though I enjoyed living there at one time. Lots of pretty places there, but completely screwed up politics dominates your living. I don't think they have much better than a 1 or 2% chance of changing for the better either. And georgia could even slip into really bad territory if the democrat party and urban-centrism continues it's dominance of politics here on most issues. For now it's "OK", but there's a chance it could get worse, and the trends are "worse" more or less right now under roy barne's and tom murphy's machines "leadership" and policies.
Politics is way more "red zone and blue zone" than party's anymore, and that is inside states as well as states in general. Well, that's my opinion anyway.
Hey all the liberals know this is a lie!! People will do anything for more money. < /sarcasm>
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