CHAMPAIGN — An overnight burglary has people nervous, especially after hearing what the suspects got their hands on. Nearly two dozen guns were stolen early this morning from the Rural King off Marketview Drive. WCIA 3’s Jeff Wagner tells us that this is not the first time this store was robbed.
Last night, our Crime Watch was about a burglary that happened at Rural King last month. The suspects broke in and stole an AR-15 rifle. Add that to the 23 guns stolen last night, and you can understand why these particular crimes have people worried.
“I think it’s going to be more robberies, more people getting shot now….terrified to even hear that type of behavior happened,” said Champaign’s Michael Hoskins. His reaction sounded like several others we heard after telling people about that smash-and-grab burglary. Read more and watch a video.
Too bad they decided to hit a relatively new outlet in town that has been pretty firearm-owner friendly and didn’t shy away from marketing politically incorrect firearms. Conditioning the likely marksmanship skills of the culprits, we hope not much damage will be done to their intended victims. Innocent bystanders are a different story.
They still need ammo…
The TV news story said that the alarm was activated by a broken window, but the bad guys were gone with their new 23 guns by the time the police arrived.
I know the police response to this was much faster than it would be to my residence. And the bad guys were long gone.
Reinforcing the fact that citizens need weapons, training, and alertness.
wow.. I was just there looking at their selection on Monday, they have (or had) a pretty nice variety, and their prices are good. And yes, they aren’t afraid to sell AR’s. They have 900-round boxes of 5.56×45 ammo for sale also, and I even found some .22LR there last week.
Hopefully these incidents don’t mess up what’s turning out to be a good supplier. The people working there are friendly too.
They may have inventory but when supplies of ARs were low, they were asking almost $100 over retail. When they were already making a substantial profit, they opted to make even more. Not a good policy for a retail chain as large as Rural King.
Why didn’t management lock these weapons up at night. They have very nice safe’s there and after the first theft one would think they would have learned something from it. I am a proud gun owner, member of the NRA and GSL but, it is stupidity like this that ruins it for the gun owners. Now if a crime is committed with one of these weapons it will be the law abiding gun owner that pays the price.
That will be racial profiling if they USE the safes in the store. Almost looks like inside information on the layout.
Sounds like an inside job… Certainly it’s someone who is very familiar with the store who wasted zero time to pull this off before police could arrive.
Champaign police are generally very good at response times. I would be surprised if it took more than three to four minutes for the first units on the scene once they received the alarm.
However, if you factor in the 30- to 60-second delay once the door alarm is tripped, plus time for the alarm company to call to see if it’s a good alarm (another 60-seconds wasted), it could have been five to seven minutes of grab and go time for bad guys. More than enough time to get a couple of dozen pistolas.
John
Or, they could have been hiding inside the store when it closed and only tripped the alarm when they were exiting with their hot inventory.
I didn’t even know Rural King sold guns besides your typical muzzleloaders. I hadn’t been there in months since they never had any ammo. Time to step it up I guess.
This is not good for Rural King. The Decatur store was broken into a while ago. Decatur looks like a inside job, now Champaign…. Hope they don’t loose there FFL’s.
Jay, if they can’t keep their armaments out of the hands of the bad guys, don’t they DESERVE to lose their FFL?
Champaign is turning into a ghetto rat hole like Decatur,Bloomington,and Springfield.