Police trace hundreds of guns found in crimes back to straw purchases.
ABC 7 reports: In last month's battlefield in Culiacan, Mexico connected to the arrest of El Chapo's son, the combatants were armed with heavy weaponry of an ongoing cartel arms race. The I-Team has uncovered that that arms race now stretches to Illinois.
The I-Team first uncovered cartel-linked weapons in a 2018 investigation that linked suburban gun sales to a transnational cocaine ring run by a drug cartel called 14 Brothers. Federal agents uncovered a stockpile of 31 weapons in a suburban storage unit that were packed and ready to head south.
Robert Melone with Homeland Security Investigations showed investigative reporter Chuck Goudie the weapons recovered in the storage unit raid, and pointed out one of the .50 cal Barrett rifles they found -- the same rifle spotted in video from the October Sinaloa raid.
Straw purchased guns from out of state are increasingly turning up at headline making crimes in Chicago, from the murder of Chicago Police Department Commander Paul Bauer to the 28-year-old woman randomly shot in the back in the Fulton River District at lunchtime.