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Illinois teen admits to stealing guns to
sell in Ferguson, Missouri
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[April 30, 2015]
By Mary Wisniewski
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A southern Illinois
teen pleaded guilty on Wednesday to federal firearms charges in a plot
to sell guns and loot businesses in Ferguson, Missouri, which had been
the site of sometimes violent protests over a fatal police shooting.
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 Dakota Moss, 19, of Centralia, admitted in federal court to
burglarizing a farm and home supply store and stealing 39 guns in
November of last year. Moss and a juvenile accomplice stole the guns
in order to sell them in Ferguson, prosecutors said.
The two also had planned to participate in rioting and looting of
businesses in the Ferguson area, though they never went through with
it, prosecutors said.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 29, 2014, Moss and his accomplice
used a pickup truck stolen from Centralia High School to ram the
locked security gate at the Buchheit store and broke out store
windows to get inside, prosecutors said.
 The two were armed and intended to shoot anyone who interrupted the
burglary, prosecutors said.
Centralia Police and agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives identified the suspects soon after
the burglary and have recovered 37 of the 39 stolen guns. Moss faces
up to 40 years in prison.
"Moss is facing a longer time in prison than the time he has been on
this earth, and for good reason: this was potentially a horribly
violent crime which could have led to massive numbers of deaths,"
said U.S. Attorney Stephen Wigginton of the Southern District of
Illinois.
Moss was convicted of stealing firearms, possession of stolen
firearms, being a felon in possession of firearms, and carry and use
of a firearm during a violent crime. He will be sentenced on July
31.
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Centralia is about 72 miles east of Ferguson, where protests and
looting erupted following the August police shooting of black
teenager Michael Brown.
Moss' accomplice is in the custody of the Illinois Department of
Juvenile Justice, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Eric Beech)
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