A Lot Of Guns Still Got Away

Convictions Fail To Satisfy ATF And D.C. Police

The crime took place about two hours from Washington, on the outskirts of Richmond: Two masked burglars smashed into a sporting-goods store and walked away with 34 semiautomatic handguns.

The two novice criminals, college-educated men who had been friends since their high school years in Greenbelt, pulled off the heist in June with plans to sell the guns for quick cash in and around the District. Federal agents and D.C. police arrested them about a week after the theft, but not fast enough to keep the guns off the market.

The men, Leon Waddy and Michael Henderson, both 22, have pleaded guilty to federal charges and were sentenced this month. The case was a law enforcement success in the courts but not necessarily on the street.

Only six guns were recovered. The others were sold, many to drug dealers, authorities said.

"That is a lot of guns out there. They're going to wreak havoc," said Sgt. Curt Sloan of the D.C. police gun recovery unit. "They mean death."

Tracking illegal guns is a pillar of Chief Cathy L. Lanier's strategy to combat violent crime. She revived the citywide gun recovery unit in October 2007, hoping that it would get hundreds of guns off the streets, curb violent crime and lead to more prosecutions. Since then, more than two dozen specially assigned officers have seized more than 500 guns in raids, traffic stops and other enforcement actions.

D.C. police often work with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and their joint efforts led to the convictions of Waddy and Henderson. A Washington Post reporter was following the D.C. police gun squad the morning that it raided Waddy's apartment in Southeast Washington. Authorities had hopes of recovering the guns stolen from the shop and of building a bigger case against gun trafficking in the city.

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Waddy and Henderson grew close during their days at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, court papers say. They remained close after they went to college.

Waddy, a math and education major at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, was to graduate in June 2009. In a court filing, his attorney said the plan to rob the store was hatched by Henderson, who had just graduated from Virginia Union University in Richmond.

The two men, who had no criminal records, broke into Green Top Sporting Goods in Glen Allen, Va., about 13 miles northwest of Richmond, at 12:25 a.m. June 13. The theft was captured by a security camera. It took just a minute and 24 seconds.

According to court papers, Waddy swung a baseball bat to break through glass in the front door. Henderson used bolt cutters to cut the lock on the security gate inside the door. Then, court papers say, the two used hammers to break into two display cases. They loaded the guns into two duffel bags and escaped, the papers say.