A former Fort Drum soldier was sentenced Tuesday to two years in federal prison for burglarizing gun shops and stealing 10 guns, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York.
Devin Diggs, 21, admitted in February to stealing five long guns from a dealer in Gouverneur on Sept. 14, 2019, and to stealing five handguns from a dealer in De Kalb Junction on Sept. 29, 2019, federal prosecutors said. All of the guns were later recovered, prosecutors said.
Diggs was the third former Fort Drum soldier sentenced in connection with the case.
Rian Patterson was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison just more than a week ago.
Tyrease Kimmons earlier admitted to getting three rifles from Patterson and Diggs after the burglaries.
Kimmons was sentenced in March to 10 months in federal prison with three years of supervised release, according to federal court records.
Diggs and Patterson were charged in October 2019. Investigators traced the two after they were captured on the stores’ surveillance cameras.
The men were both stationed at Fort Drum when the two licensed firearms dealers were burglarized in September last year.
Investigators used surveillance footage, witnesses and New York state’s license plate readers to track down the suspects, according to court records. Fort Drum officials also found two guns during a separate search conducted due to drug activity in a unit there.
Some of the firearms, five in total, were located in a duffel bag under Kimmons’ bed, court records said. The guns were loaded at the time they were recovered, according the court records.
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