The gun belonging to former Los Angeles police Officer Christopher Dorner that was found earlier this month during a search of an Airbnb in relation to a Beverly Hills robbery was not a city-owned weapon or his duty weapon, Los Angeles interim police Chief Dominic Choi said.
Commissioner Rasha Gerges Shields, during the weekly LAPD Commission meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 20, asked the chief if the department was ever in possession of the weapon.
“There’s no evidence to suggest that,” he said.
The gun turned up in the bedroom of an Airbnb used by two South American nationals, or so-called crime tourists, who were charged last week in the armed robbery of a $1 million watch at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Aug. 7, authorities said.
Whether that weapon was used during Dorner’s murderous rampage against law enforcement in 2013 was unclear.
Dorner had sought revenge for losing his job and killed four people, including the daughter of a then-LAPD captain in Irvine, before taking his own life in a cabin in the San Bernardino County mountains during a standoff with police.
In the robbery case, Jamer Mauricio Sepulveda Salazar, 21, of Colombia faces a federal charge of interference with commerce by robbery and one count of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a violent crime, federal authorities said. Jesus Eduardo Padron Rojas, 19, of Venezuela has been charged with conspiracy to commit robbery.
The two were accused of robbing a man as he sat on the patio of a restaurant at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, with one holding him at gunpoint and chambering a round while the other removed the watch, a silver Patek Philippe.
The men then got into a blue Toyota Corolla and fled with Sepulveda driving, according to court documents. They were arrested during a traffic stop on Aug. 10.
The FBI is investigating the case. Choi said federal authorities are looking into how the suspects came to possess the gun.
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