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Capitol Police arrested a man Friday who attempted to enter the fenced perimeter of downtown Washington with at least one gun and more than 500 bullets, but the detainee assured this Saturday that he had been lost and that it was not his intention to bring ammunition to the capital.
The arrest came at a time of high tension across the country, but especially in the American capital, whose center has become a armored fortress faced with the risk of further armed attacks in the days leading up to Wednesday’s inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden.
The arrest occurred after 18:30 on Friday (23:30 GMT), when the man, identified as Wesley Allen Beeler, approached a police checkpoint located near the Capitol, one of many located around the security perimeter that prevents entering the center of the capital.
Beeler, 31, of Front Royal, Virginia, presented the police with a apparently false accreditation to access the perimeter on the occasion of the investiture, and revealed that he had in the vehicle a semi-automatic Glock pistol, which turned out to be loaded with 17 bullets, according to police sources.
“An innocent mistake”
After the arrest, the Police seized the weapon, with another 509 rounds, 21 shotgun shells and a magazine for the pistol, indicates a report by the Washington Police Department accessed by CNN and The New York Times.
Beeler was arrested for possession of an unregistered weapon and unregistered ammunition, and appeared this Saturday before a Washington judge, who granted him provisional liberty and ordered him not to return to the city except for the judicial hearings of the case.
In an interview this Saturday with The Washington Post, Beeler stated that he had arrived in the capital to work as a private security agent for a company during the inauguration, and that the accreditation that he showed to the police was the one that that company had given him.
“It was an innocent mistake”, said Beeler, who said that he approached the agents after being “lost” in the city, that he does have a license to carry weapons, but he had forgotten it at home, and that it is not true that he had more than 500 bullets in the car , as stated by the Police.
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