Authorities say that a convicted felon from Daytona Beach, Florida, tried to get into a Volusia County courthouse with a stolen gun and a meth pipe for an appointment that didn’t exist. The person was caught.
Robert Suggs, 34, was out on bond for felony animal cruelty, but now he is charged with having a gun while being a state felon, having drug paraphernalia, grand theft of a firearm, and concealing a firearm. The charges were made after the event at the Volusia County Justice Center on Friday.
Before Suggs could pass through a security checkpoint, police stopped him because they saw a gun in his backpack.
The sheriff’s office said the gun had seven rounds in the magazine and one round in the barrel.
FOX 35 in Orlando got a statement that says when Suggs was arrested, he “spontaneously” said the gun wasn’t his and that he was going to give it back to a “friend.” The statement says that the suspect could not give the full or real name of the “friend” or say where they live.
The sheriff’s office said that Suggs told the officers that his friend let him use his backpack, but when he went to the courthouse, he forgot that the gun was in the backpack.
While they were investigating, deputies found out that the Ruger.A 22-caliber pistol that Sugg had was stolen.
The statement says that security found a small folding knife, a razor knife, felt tip pens, a blue Motorola cell phone, clothes, and an HP laptop computer in the backpack along with the gun.
The statement said that when police patted Suggs down, they found a small glass pipe with burned residue in his pocket. The pipe tested “presumptively positive for methamphetamine.”
Deputies were told that Suggs found the pipe about 200 yards from the building and picked it up because “he thought there was methamphetamine” in it.
More research showed that Suggs did not have an appointment at the courts, even though he said he was there to see the public defender’s office.
“Great job by our court security team,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook.
