A gun once registered to Christopher Dorner — the notorious former Los Angeles cop who killed four people, including two law enforcement officers — was found in the Los Angeles Airbnb belonging to two alleged “crime tourists,” federal prosecutors say.
The two South American nationals are accused of stealing a watch worth $1 million at gunpoint last week from the patio of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
Did they use Dorner’s gun to commit the alleged crime?
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jena MacCabe would not confirm that the gun was used in the alleged robbery, KCAL reported, but an affidavit said it was the only weapon found in the arrests.
“We’re still trying to figure it out,” MacCabe said.
Prosecutors say the suspects robbed the victim in front of his wife and 5-year-old twin daughters at an upscale Beverly Hills hotel. One of them held a gun while the other took the man’s luxury watch, a Patek Philippe, before fleeing in a car with a stolen license plate, the affidavit said.
Street cameras near the Beverly Wilshire captured the armed robbery of a man in front of his family on August 7.
(United States District Court)
Jamer Mauricio Sepulveda Salazar, 21, of Colombia, is charged with two counts in connection with the armed robbery. Jesus Eduardo Padron Rojas, 19, of Venezuela, is charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery.
Sepulveda said the team had been conducting surveillance for two weeks in an attempt to steal a Patek Phillipe watch, the complaint says, and the two men admitted their involvement in the theft of a $30,000 Rolex in Beverly Hills two days before the theft of the $1 million watch.
Investigators found a handgun in Padron’s pillowcase at the suspects’ Airbnb on Browning Boulevard in Los Angeles. The gun was registered to Dorner, a former officer who targeted LAPD officers he said had wronged him.
Over a nine-day spree in 2013, Dorner killed four people — two police officers, the daughter of a former LAPD captain and her fiancé — and wounded three others. He died in a cabin in Big Bear that caught fire after a shootout with authorities.
MacCabe said investigators were “trying to understand how this weapon, which was so old, came into their possession and was linked to this series of violent armed robberies.”
