Venezuelan Man Held After 23 American-Built Assault Rifles Found in Guyana

A joint police and anti-narcotics team discovered nearly two dozen AK-47 firearms and hundreds of bullets during a vehicle stop in Schoonord. Officials say the guns originated from the United States, with most of their serial numbers filed off.

Venezuelan Man Held After 23 American-Built Assault Rifles Found in Guyana

A nighttime vehicle inspection in Schoonord, West Bank Demerara, uncovered a major weapons cache, leading to the detention of a foreign national and the escape of two accomplices.

Officers from the Criminal Investigations Department and the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit carried out the joint sting on Thursday evening. Inside the stopped automobile, they found twenty-three AK-47 assault rifles along with what commanders described as a sizable amount of ammunition. According to Demerara Waves, the haul included 504 rounds of 7.62×39 caliber bullets.

Wendell Blanhum, the deputy commissioner who oversees CID, revealed that ballistics experts determined the rifles were manufactured in the United States. He noted that factory identification had been scraped away on twenty-two of the firearms, leaving just a single weapon with a legible serial number.

The person apprehended at the scene was identified as Jonathan Gans, aged 28, originally from Venezuela and living on Third Street in the Grove community on the East Bank of Demerara. He is now being questioned by investigators while forensic technicians analyze the guns at the force's crime laboratory.

The Caribbean has long struggled with the influx of illegal weaponry from abroad. Regional bloc CARICOM has repeatedly pressed Washington to tighten controls on firearms flowing southward. The United States previously proposed that island and mainland Caribbean nations plug into a shared ballistics-tracking database to help locate and intercept smuggled arms.

This latest find follows a similar case from last month in Berbice, where authorities recovered ten AK-47 rifles. Three local citizens are already before the judiciary in relation to that earlier discovery.

Source: Google News GY — Crime