Springfield police say they recovered four illegal firearms — a ghost gun, a converted machine gun, an AR-15-style rifle and another loaded pistol — along with roughly 134 grams of cocaine after a ShotSpotter alert sent officers to Spring Street. Three people were arrested, including 19-year-old Springfield resident Jahfed Maldonado, in a case that investigators say began with gunfire and ended with a backpack full of weapons sitting outside an apartment door.
ShotSpotter Alert Sets Off a Manhunt
According to the Springfield Police Department, officers responded to a ShotSpotter activation on the 100 block of Spring Street at approximately 4:45 p.m. over the weekend. Officers recovered evidence of a shooting at the scene, but no victims or property damage were located, police said. Firearms Investigation Unit detectives then reviewed city camera footage and said they observed two suspected shooting participants, eventually tracking them to an apartment on the 400 block of Worthington Street.
Detectives detained a 17-year-old male and Maldonado, and police alleged that both were shooting suspects. Outside the apartment door, detectives found a backpack containing all four firearms, and in the building hallway, they located approximately 134 grams of cocaine, according to the department's account.
What Was Inside the Backpack
Police identified a ghost gun and a fully automatic machine gun among the recovered firearms. Under Massachusetts law, a firearm qualifies as a machine gun when it can automatically discharge more than one shot through continuous trigger activation, including weapons modified with an automatic conversion part, according to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 140, Section 121.
The fourth weapon was an AR-15-style rifle, police said.
Charges and an Unreleased Second Juvenile
Three suspects in total were arrested on firearms charges. Maldonado was charged with carrying a firearm without a license, carrying a loaded firearm without a license on a public way, and discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a building, per the department's Facebook post. Police said they would not release the names and charges of the other suspects because of their ages — a detail also noted in reporting by WWLP.
A City Already Swimming in Seized Guns
The Worthington Street arrests landed just two days after a separate North End shooting spree left four men arrested and damaged one car and two homes, according to MassLive. In that October 25 incident, officers seized four firearms, including a ghost gun with no serial number, and said evidence showed at least 61 bullets were fired during a gun battle that spread around Calhoun, Main and Dwight streets and Jefferson Avenue. Police said nearly 300 illegal guns had been taken off Springfield streets in 2026 as of October 26, per Western Mass News.
Springfield police seized 347 guns in 2025, MassLive reported, with the department's Firearms Investigation Unit accounting for 164 of those seizures. The city recorded 17 homicides in 2025, and the number of shooting victims was nearly half that of the previous year, MassLive reported. The department seized 255 guns in 2021.
Other recent cases underscore how often ghost guns and rifles are turning up in the city's residential buildings. In a separate incident, WWLP reported that a joint law enforcement investigation led to the seizure of an AR-style rifle and a ghost gun, with officers finding two loaded guns under the bed of a 15-year-old suspect who had cut off his court-ordered GPS ankle bracelet.
