By Annie Linskey
The Baltimore Sun
Watch video
BALTIMORE — City police officers raided the Northwest Baltimore home of a convicted sex offender yesterday and seized 38 firearms — including two sawed-off shotguns, handguns, and a weapon described as an “Uzi-type machine gun,” officials said.
Police displayed the cache and ammunition on tables at a news conference yesterday in police headquarters.
“These are the guns that are out there killing people on our streets today,” said acting police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. “This is an incredibly deadly arsenal - not unlike weapons being used too frequently in this city.”
Mayor Sheila Dixon has made seizing illegal weapons the centerpiece of her crime plan, and said at the news conference: “These guns represent saving lives. ... We’ve stayed on course to decrease crime to get rid of illegal guns in this city and to bring an end to the murder rate.”
The Police Department has seized 1,894 illegal weapons so far this year, about 7 percent more than last year, according to department statistics.
Despite the seizures, shootings and homicides have increased over last year’s numbers. At the time of yesterday’s news conference, this year’s homicide total stood at 178 - up from 151 at the same time last year. There had been 430 nonfatal shootings this year, compared with 322 in the same period last year.
Police arrested Orlando H. Yarborough, 61, of the 4400 block of Finney Ave. in connection with the seizure of the guns. He was convicted of a third-degree sex offense in Baltimore County in 2001 and spent three years in prison, police said. Because he was convicted of a felony, he is barred from possessing firearms.
Lt. Dan A. Lioi, who heads the new gun unit, said police acted on a tip from the state attorney general’s office, and searched Yarborough’s house about 4:45 a.m. Officers found the guns locked in a refrigerator in the basement of the house, Lioi said. The key to the lock was in a dining room cabinet.
Yarborough was charged with 31 counts of regulated firearms in the possession of a prohibited person, a police spokesman, Officer Troy Harris, said last night. Yarborough was being held at the Central Booking and Intake Center, he added.
Two weapons that Yarborough purchased legally — but had reported stolen — were used in city crimes in 1998 and 1999, police said.
Yarborough had registered 16 guns, but four of those registered were not found yesterday, a fact that outraged Bealefeld.
“He has guns and he doesn’t even know where they are,” Bealefeld said.
Copyright 2007 The Baltimore Sun