1,200 Guns, Two Tons Of Ammunition Discovered In Dead Man’s Residence

Los Angeles police were shocked after they found over 1,200 guns and approximately two tons of ammunition inside the residence of a man who had been dead for about two weeks. As reported by the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, the massive collection of 1,200 guns is believed to have belonged to 60-year-old Jeffrey Alan Lash, a Los Angeles County resident.

Lash’s decomposing body was discovered in a car parked down the street from his home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. While detectives are baffled as to why the man had 1,200 guns, it is not a crime to have an arsenal of that size. An official investigation has been launched and police plan on examining each gun to determine a possible connection to any crime.

Speaking with media outlets about the incident, LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith gave the following statement.

“We have a lot of work to do. Running the background, history and legality of these weapons is going to require a tremendous amount of time. It’s not a crime to have a large number of weapons so long as they were legal to own and legally obtained. We want to make sure that’s the case.”

Smith described the amount of guns as “staggering” and he said the haul required two trips.

“Our truck couldn’t carry it all,” Smith said. “We had to go back and make another trip.”

Researchers say Lash had been decomposing in his car for about two weeks before someone finally called police on Friday afternoon. Foul play is not suspected in the man’s death, and they are not investigating the death as a homicide.

LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said most of the guns were in good condition and some were still wrapped in boxes with price tags, New York Daily News reports. Albanese said there were a lot of expensive guns in the collection and he says it was probably worth a small fortune.

Shirley Anderson, 93, told reporters that although she was a longtime partner of the man’s deceased father, she didn’t know much about him because he mainly kept to himself.

“He was just a loner, as far as we were concerned,” the elderly woman said. “He just became weird because he changed all of a sudden. He was not very forthcoming about what he was doing,” Anderson explained. “He had to be doing something to collect all those guns.”

[Image via Shutterstock]