A 49-year-old Homeland man is facing multiple felony charges after Riverside County sheriff's deputies say a shooting investigation in Winchester led them to a home stocked with 13 firearms, including a suppressed handgun and a stolen weapon. Jason Adams was arrested Friday in the 800 block of West Florida Avenue in Hemet, and a search of his residence in the 26000 block of Guthridge Lane in Homeland turned up an arsenal that included several assault rifles and multiple guns with no serial numbers.
The case traces back to July 31, when Perris Sheriff's Station deputies were called to the 33000 block of Simpson Road in the unincorporated community of Winchester, according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Office. The shooting victim had already been taken to a nearby hospital by another person and was later released after treatment, and the victim remains unidentified, as reported by CBS Los Angeles. The sheriff's office logged the investigation under case file #PC262120072, with Sergeant Kevin Mahoney overseeing the probe, according to the agency's own records.
Major Crimes Unit Tracks Down Suspect With K-9 Help
Investigators with the sheriff's Major Crimes Unit identified Adams as the suspect and located him more than a week later, on August 7, with backup from the Special Enforcement Bureau and the department's K-9 unit. He was booked into the Cois M. Byrd Detention Center, a 1,111-bed Riverside County Sheriff's Office facility on Auld Road near Murrieta in the French Valley area. Deputies say they recovered several items of evidence connected to the shooting during the search of his Homeland home.
Adams was charged with assault with a deadly weapon-firearm and with being a felon in possession of a firearm, per the same sheriff's release cited by the station's report. Many of the 13 firearms pulled from the property were unregistered or lacked serial numbers altogether, and the haul also included a stolen handgun alongside the suppressed weapon.
What California Law Says About the Charges
The felon-in-possession charge stems from California Penal Code Section 29800, which imposes a lifetime ban on owning or possessing firearms or ammunition for anyone with a prior felony conviction in any state or federal court, with violations prosecuted as felonies carrying up to three years in state prison, according to My Rights Law. Separately, possessing a suppressor is its own straight felony under Penal Code Section 33410, punishable by up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine, since California offers no civilian permitting or registration pathway for silencers at all, per Eisner Gorin LLP.
The assault charge falls under Penal Code Section 245(a)(2), a wobbler offense that prosecutors can pursue as a felony carrying two, three, or four years in state prison, with additional enhancements possible depending on the weapon involved or the suspect's criminal history. Because several of the seized guns lacked serial numbers, they likely also run afoul of Assembly Bill 1621, which California enacted in 2022 to subject self-assembled firearms and unfinished frames to the same background-check, serialization, and licensed-dealer requirements as commercially sold guns, according to the California Legislature's Senate Public Safety Committee.
Ghost Guns a Persistent Problem in Riverside County
The unserialized weapons found at Adams's home fit into a broader regional pattern. A California Department of Justice report cited by law enforcement showed Riverside County logged 770 crime-related ghost guns recovered in a single reporting year, placing it among the highest counties in Southern California for untraceable firearm seizures tied to crime.
Both Winchester and Homeland are unincorporated communities in western Riverside County without their own city councils or mayors, leaving governance to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and law enforcement entirely to the sheriff's office. Homeland's population was recorded at 6,772 in the 2020 census, up 13.5 percent from 5,969 residents a decade earlier, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The identity of the shooting victim has not been released, and the sheriff's office has not disclosed a motive or described any relationship between Adams and the person who was shot. Anyone with information is asked to contact RSO Perris Sheriff's Station Investigator Ortiz at 951-210-1000.
