One suspect is dead and four armed and dangerous gunmen were on the run in a suburban Washington, D.C., neighborhood Thursday after smashing into a gun shop with their car and stealing weapons.
The dead suspect was killed by police after the thieves rammed a police cruiser several blocks from United Gun Shop in Rockville, Maryland, 35 miles northwest of Washington. The four suspects fled on foot.
Marcus Jones, acting chief of the Montgomery County police, told reporters the gunmen had smashed their way into the gun store with a stolen car around 2:35 a.m. Thursday, broke open gun cases, grabbed weapons, and fled the scene within two or three minutes.
He said police arrived at the store within a minute after a store alarm was triggered.
Jones called on residents to be “very cautious while leaving their homes this morning.”
“Anyone that’s brazen enough to want to drive into a gun store bright and early in the morning and ram it with such a vicious way, we believe they came here armed and dangerous from the beginning,” Jones said.
Jones said police recovered three handguns, apparently stolen from the store, near the vehicle where they tried to make their getaway.
Police scouring the residential neighborhood around the gun shop also found a bag full of stolen guns in the backyard of a house, Jones said.
He said he did not have an accounting of how many guns in total were stolen. He said said the store had also been hit previously by smash-and-run burglars.
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