A speeding car with heavily tinted windows on Washington Street led Boston police to a loaded handgun rigged to fire automatically, according to officials. The early morning stop on Sunday ended with the arrest of a 25-year-old East Boston man on multiple firearm charges.
Officers spotted the vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed and noticed its heavily tinted windows before pulling it over near Dorchester Avenue and Van Winkle Street, according to Boston 25 News. Police had also been in the area responding to an earlier report of a person with a gun, the outlet reported. During the stop, officers ordered the driver, identified as Takhari Walter Robinson, out of the car.
A search turned up a firearm underneath the driver's seat, police said. According to the Boston Police Department, investigators determined the weapon was a Glock 20 10mm handgun fitted with a sear switch — a modification police said gave the gun the ability to fire automatically. The department said the firearm was loaded with fifteen rounds of live ammunition in a high-capacity magazine.
Multiple Firearm Charges Filed
Robinson faces several firearm-related charges stemming from the stop: possession of a loaded machine gun, possession of a machine gun, carrying a loaded firearm without a license, possession of ammunition without an FID card, and possession of a large-capacity feeding device. The Boston Herald also reported that police issued Robinson a citation for motor vehicle violations in connection with the stop.
He is expected to be arraigned at Dorchester District Court, per the same police account. As with any criminal case, the charges remain allegations, and Robinson is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
What Counts as a Machine Gun Under the Law
Massachusetts law treats possession of a machine gun and large-capacity feeding devices as serious offenses. Under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 269, Section 10, carrying a dangerous weapon or possessing a machine gun, sawed-off shotgun, or large-capacity weapon or feeding device carries its own punishment framework separate from standard firearm charges.
A large-capacity feeding device is specifically defined under Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 140, Section 121 as a fixed or detachable magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition or more than five shotgun shells — a threshold the fifteen-round magazine found in Robinson's car would exceed. At the federal level, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives defines a machine gun under the National Firearms Act as including any combination of parts designed to convert a weapon to shoot automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger — the same category a sear switch falls into.
Not the First Dorchester Gun Stop This Month
This was not the only traffic stop in the neighborhood to end with a firearm recovery recently. On October 4, officers assigned to District C-11 in Dorchester conducted a separate traffic stop that led to the arrest of 27-year-old Johnny Williams Delacruz of Quincy and the recovery of a loaded firearm near 54 Washington Street, according to the Boston Police Department.
The department maintains daily counts of firearms recovered citywide, broken down by categories including crime and voluntary surrender.
