Opinion ID: 3210085
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Discovery of a Short-Barrel Shotgun

Text: On July 23, 2014, nine days after the burglary, agents from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration executed a search warrant—one unrelated to the Palomo burglary— on the car of Martinez’s girlfriend, Amanda Dowers. In Dowers’s car trunk, the agents found and seized a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun with a 17-inch barrel.1 A witness later told DCI that the shotgun belonged to Martinez. Sometime after the agents executed the search warrant, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Agents Steve McFarland and Matthew Wright took possession of the shotgun and began investigating Martinez. The agents ran a trace on the shotgun’s serial number and learned that June Palomo had bought the shotgun from a Walmart in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Although this was consistent with Arlo Palomo’s statements to Torrington police after the burglary, the record doesn’t say whether Torrington police had advised the ATF agents about the Palomo burglary before the ATF agents ran the trace.