A Colt Anaconda revolver similar to one allegedly stolen from a Shelton home last year. Image courtesy Jeff Dean via Wikimedia Commons.
Jelani Lemon, 22, was charged last month with a single count of first-degree larceny, along with 45 counts of theft of a firearm.
Lemon appeared at Superior Court in Milford May 21, where he pleaded not guilty to the charges. He will be back in court June 26.
The path from the alleged Shelton theft to Lemon’s arrest is convoluted tale of laundry baskets, an informant, and Newark, N.J. Court documents indicate most of the alleged stolen weapons are still on the streets.
According to court documents, Lemon stole the guns on Aug. 22, 2013 from a house on a cul de sac in Huntington.
But the homeowners did not realize the guns were missing until Oct. 12, 2013, when they were contacted by detectives from Fairfield.
The Fairfield detectives had arrested Lemon in their town, where he was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in court. According to police, cops found pills and a handgun in his possession.
Police used the serial number on the gun to trace it back to the Shelton family.
The homeowners told police their daughter, who is addicted to painkillers, knew Lemon, and that the guns were not locked up.
They apparently didn’t know the guns were missing because the family’s father has 161 legally registered firearms of various “makes, models and calibers,” according to a police affidavit.
But, a few weeks before Fairfield police showed up at her door, the family’s mother had noticed a mysterious pile of laundry near the spot where they kept their arsenal.
“This struck (the woman) as strange, as normally the laundry would be in a laundry basket and not just laying on the floor,” the affidavit states.
The laundry basket was of particular interest to Fairfield police, because a confidential informant had recently tipped them off about seeing Lemon with “a laundry basket full of handguns.”
Police interviewed the family’s daughter, who said Lemon had been in the house with her without her parents’ knowledge in August, but that she fell asleep before he left.
The daughter said she did not show Lemon where her dad kept his 161 weapons.
But Fairfield police later arrested a man named Sean Zambrano, of Fairfield, on drug charges. He told police that Lemon had brought a laundry basket of guns to his residence, including a Colt Anaconda. Several of the gun boxes, but not the actual guns, were found at Zambrano’s place.
Police then searched Lemon’s parents’ house in Naugatuck, where they allegedly recovered more empty gun boxes, along with ammunition.
Finally, police interviewed Lemon, who said the Shelton family’s daughter had given him the guns, and that he had “off loaded” some of the guns to relatives in the Newark, N.J. area.
Eventually the Shelton family was able to inventory their arsenal, figuring out that 46 handguns were missing.
The stolen firearms were valued at $50,000 because many of the guns are discontinued, collector items, were never fired, or even removed from the original boxes.
