A D.C. man has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for stealing firearms from a Maryland gun store.
Justice Department officials said in a statement Wednesday that Xyavion Lawrence, 20, pleaded guilty in the burglary of an Essex gun shop in Baltimore County in August 2019.
He’s been found guilty of theft of firearms from a federal firearms licensee’s inventory.
Security footage showed Lawrence backing a car into the store’s front door before going inside and taking the guns. He and an associate returned to the vehicle with the weapons and fled the scene.
After the burglary, Lawrence showed several of the stolen firearms in a social media video. He wore the same clothes, mask and gloves used in the burglary, while investigators identified his forearm tattoo from the surveillance footage.
They also confirmed the weapons in the video were from the burglary, as they had the same strings tied around the trigger guards as the ones sold in the gun store.
Lawrence also wore an ankle monitor at the time of the burglary, which placed his location at the gun store at the time of the event, officials said.
He was arrested Aug. 10, 2019, two days after the burglary, while carrying a .22 revolver, one of the stolen weapons from the burglary. He told investigators that he stole six firearms from the gun store.
Lawrence was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
WTOP’s Juan Herrera contributed to this report.
