Virginia man arrested on honeymoon with gun in carry-on luggage at RIC

A Virginia man was arrested on his way to honeymoon when Transportation Security Agency officers detected a loaded gun in his carry-on baggage at Richmond International Airport in Sandston Nov. 14.

A TSA officer spotted the 9 mm handgun loaded with eight bullets, including one in the chamber as the Dinwiddie County man’s belongings entered the security checkpoint X-ray machine.

TSA alerted airport police, who responded to the checkpoint, confiscated the handgun and arrested the man, who was ticketed to fly to Hawaii for his honeymoon with his wife. He claimed that he forgot that he had his loaded gun with him.

“When you’re packing for a flight, my advice is to make sure that your baggage is empty when you start to pack to ensure that there is nothing prohibited in it,” said Chuck Burke, TSA’s Federal Security Director for Richmond International Airport.

It was the 18th gun stopped at the checkpoint at RIC this year already – matching the total from 2017 as the highest in the past five calendar years.

A typical first offense for carrying a loaded handgun into a checkpoint is $4,100 but can be as high as $13,669, depending upon mitigating circumstances.

Nationwide last year, 4,432 firearms were discovered in carry-on bags at checkpoints across the country, averaging about 12.1 firearms per day, approximately a 5% increase nationally in firearm discoveries from the total of 4,239 detected in 2018. Eighty-seven percent of firearms detected at checkpoints last year were loaded.