An 18-year-old Eagle Lake man is facing 11 criminal charges after investigators searching his family's home found illegal machine gun conversion switches, stolen firearms, fentanyl pills and methamphetamine paraphernalia scattered through a house where four children lived. Daniel Russell Chevre Jr. told investigators he would have shot at officers during the raid if his mother and the children had not been inside, according to a probable cause statement tied to the case.
Investigators obtained a search warrant for the residence on the 100 block of North Agency Street in Eagle Lake, executing it at 12:15 p.m. on August 26, according to FOX 9 Minneapolis-St. Paul. The warrant followed a tip from Homeland Security Investigations, which alerted a Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension special agent about a package arriving from mainland China. That package, per the station's report, contained an aluminum Glock conversion switch hidden inside a key chain and a necklace.
Officers found Chevre with a loaded, stolen Glock 27 40 S&W fitted with a drum-style extended-capacity magazine in his pocket. Another firearm turned up under the desk in his bedroom, and a Glock .45 that had been stolen out of St. Paul was later found to have the newly delivered conversion switch installed on it. Chevre reportedly told investigators, “I just put this on the back of my gun,” and admitted he installed the delivered switch himself, per the same account.
A Year of Online Orders From Overseas
Chevre told investigators he purchased all of the switches online over the past year from what he believed was a Chinese seller. Beyond the two guns, searchers recovered 14 additional machine gun conversion device components in his bedroom, along with 33 suspected fentanyl pills, 97 suspected tramadol pills and six empty bottles of promethazine. He admitted the 33 pills belonged to him and told investigators the recovered guns and switches were his as well, the article notes.
A Glock switch converts a standard semi-automatic pistol into a fully automatic weapon capable of firing at a dramatically higher rate. Federal prosecutors and the U.S. Department of Justice have warned that installing such a switch can push a pistol's rate of fire to 1,100 to 1,200 rounds per minute, and the ATF seized more than 31,000 of the devices nationwide over a five-year span, a scale that has fueled aggressive prosecution of even single-component cases. Under federal law, the devices are classified as machine guns in their own right regardless of whether they're attached to a gun, carrying up to 10 years in federal prison for unauthorized possession.
Threats, a Prior Incident and an Obstruction Charge
Chevre also told investigators he would have shot at officers had his mother and the children not been present, and separately made a threat to stab someone in the neck and watch that person die, according to the FOX 9 report. Investigators noted he had previously used a Glock pistol in a December 2024 drug-related incident in St. Paul. He now faces a gross misdemeanor charge of obstructing or interfering with a peace officer, which carries a maximum penalty of 364 days in jail and a $3,000 fine.
In total, Chevre faces six counts involving illegal machine gun conversion kits, two counts of receiving stolen firearms, two counts of possessing a controlled substance in a public housing zone, and other charges tied to the raid. The controlled-substance counts include one involving three grams or more of heroin and carry a maximum sentence of three to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The receiving-stolen-property counts carry a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $100,000 fine, while each machine gun conversion count alone carries up to 20 years and a $35,000 fine.
Those maximum penalties trace back to a Minnesota law that took effect August 1, 2023, which quadrupled the state's potential prison exposure for owning, possessing or operating a machine gun conversion kit from five years to 20 years, and raised the maximum fine from $10,000 to $35,000, according to KNSI. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has pointed to a 1,400 percent nationwide surge in incidents involving conversion devices between 2019 and 2021 as justification for the crackdown, per the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General.
Others Arrested, Children Found Living Amid Drugs
Three other adults connected to the home were also taken into custody. Cassandra Lynn Letourneau, 37, was stopped at 11:53 a.m. after leaving the residence and told law enforcement Chevre would not be cooperative and would be in his bedroom; she separately said she had smoked methamphetamine the previous week in the garage. Christine Joanne Pinc, 62, and Todd Richard Wyberala, 55, were also arrested on drug-related charges. As of August 26, formal charges against Letourneau, Wyberala and Pinc had not yet been announced, and all three remained in the Blue Earth County jail, per the FOX 9 report.
A criminal complaint detailed conditions inside the home where four children, ages 4 to 16, were present during the search. Methamphetamine pipes were found throughout the house, drug baggies that field-tested positive for methamphetamine residue were found next to children's cups in a bedroom, two young children were found sleeping in a closet bunkbed, and an adult was reportedly watching pornography in front of minors, according to reporting from Lou Raguse. Investigators also found a methamphetamine pipe and baggies with crystalline residue in Pinc's basement.
Under Minnesota Statute § 609.666, negligently storing or leaving a loaded firearm where a person knows or reasonably should know a child under 18 could gain access is a gross misdemeanor punishable by up to 364 days in jail, according to the Minnesota Revisor's Office. The case was investigated by the Blue Earth County Sheriff's Office working alongside the Minnesota River Valley Drug Task Force — a regional partnership drawing personnel from Blue Earth, Nicollet, Martin and Watonwan counties along with municipal police in Mankato, North Mankato, St. Peter and Fairmont — as well as the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and Homeland Security Investigations.
Small Town, International Trafficking Route
Eagle Lake is a small suburban city roughly six miles east of Mankato, with an estimated 2026 population of 3,354, a 64% homeownership rate and a median household income of $96,964, according to Citizen Portal data. Chevre listed his address as 125 North Agency St. in Eagle Lake and reportedly went by the display name Danny Boy. The case underscores how foreign-manufactured conversion parts, ordered online and disguised inside everyday mail packages, have reached small residential communities far from any border.
Federal lawmakers have tried to get ahead of that pipeline. In May 2023, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Gary Peters of Michigan introduced legislation aimed at coordinating a national strategy across federal agencies to stop foreign-manufactured auto sears from entering the country, as reported by The Trace. The Eagle Lake case echoes an earlier Minnesota prosecution Hoodline covered involving a Twin Cities teen, in which a federal jury convicted a 19-year-old of machine gun possession after a Glock fitted with a conversion switch was found during a traffic stop. It remains an open question whether federal prosecutors in the District of Minnesota will bring their own charges against Chevre under the National Firearms Act in addition to the state case. The investigation remains ongoing.
