A Florida police officer was left red-faced after robbers made off with his police pistol while he sat in a gas station bathroom.
The sleepy trooper had stopped to answer nature’s call at a RaceTrac restroom in Oviedo in Seminole County around 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
He threw his vest on the ground and hung his gun belt over a railing after entering a handicapped stall at the outlet on Red Bug Lake Road.
It was only after he left to respond to a call for service that he realized his gun was missing from his gun belt and ran into the store in an attempt to see if it was still there.
When his colleagues examined the store’s security footage, they saw a man exiting the bathroom with a “noticeable bulge on the right side of his waist,” before discovering that the Sig Sauer P320 had been sold for “$40 via CashApp.”
Chance Byron, left, and Damari Dennis, right, have been charged with multiple felonies after allegedly stealing a police handgun left by an officer in a Florida bathroom.
The Seminole County deputy had stopped at the RaceTrac branch in Ovieda.
Chance Byron, 26, and “violent offender” Damari Dennis, 23, were arrested at their homes near Orlando and charged with multiple crimes, including grand theft of a firearm.
Arrest affidavits indicate the officer, whose name has not yet been released, was making a call on his cell phone when the robber “possibly reached under the stall and pulled his firearm from his waistband without him seeing it.”
But WFTV9 He said security footage showed the officer had already left the gas station when the two men stopped at its pumps.
Investigators said the arrested men admitted seeing the officer’s gun inside the stall “sticking out of the toilet paper roll.”
Denis told police he “didn’t want to touch him because he was on parole.”
But Byron told them that Dennis pointed out the gun to him before picking it up.
The video shows Byron emerging from the bathroom with a large bulge next to his waist and his right arm pressed against his side, before both men returned to Byron’s car and left the gas station.
According to the sheriff’s office, Dennis is considered a “violent offender” and has been on probation since April from the Florida Department of Corrections.
Dennis’s social media pages reveal that he has a long-standing interest in firearms.
According to the sheriff’s office, Dennis is considered a “violent offender.”
His social media pages, on which he describes himself as a “digital creator,” reveal a long-standing interest in firearms and feature photos of himself cradling a gun against his chin and using a laser sight to aim another.
Chance’s bail has been set at $20,000 for trafficking in stolen property and grand theft of a firearm.
Dennis has been fined $5,000 for grand theft of a firearm, $15,000 for trafficking in stolen property and another $15,000 for possession of a weapon by a convicted felon.
Both men are due to appear in court on October 8.
The officer is expected to face a disciplinary investigation by the department’s professional standards division.
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