A New Mexico man with seven prior felony convictions has been sentenced to the maximum prison term federal law allows after he stole two firearms from a licensed gun dealer in El Paso, Texas, and carried them across the state line to his home in Alamogordo, where prosecutors say he planned to sell them for drug money. Shawn Cole Camu, 38, was sentenced in federal court in El Paso to 180 months — 15 years — in prison, U.S. Attorney Justin R. Simmons for the Western District of Texas announced.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Western District of Texas
According to court documents cited by the Justice Department, the theft happened on January 9, when Camu stole two firearms from a Federal Firearms Licensee — a licensed gun dealer — in El Paso. He then transported the stolen weapons to his home in Alamogordo, New Mexico, intending to sell them for drug money, the department said.
A record that barred him from ever holding a gun
Camu was already legally barred from possessing any firearm. The Justice Department said his seven prior felony convictions in Colorado and New Mexico include residential burglary, armed burglary, robbery and assault. Under federal law, a convicted felon may not possess, receive or transport firearms, which is why the January theft exposed him to three separate federal charges rather than a single state theft count.
The timeline moved quickly after the theft. Camu was arrested on January 10, one day after the guns were taken, and a federal grand jury indicted him in February on one count of theft of a firearm from a federal firearms licensee, one count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person, and one count of transportation of a stolen firearm. On August 11 he pleaded guilty to all three counts.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone sentenced Camu to the statutory maximum for each charge. The Justice Department's announcement, carried by Albuquerque's KKOB News Radio, described the outcome as 15 years in federal prison — the longest sentence the law permitted on these charges.
Who built the case
The investigation was carried out jointly by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the El Paso Police Department and the Alamogordo Police Department, the Justice Department said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Wisniewski prosecuted the case in the Western District of Texas.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Western District of Texas
Theft from a licensed dealer is treated as a serious federal offence in the United States because stolen dealer firearms are a known pipeline into violent crime: every gun taken from a dealer's inventory enters circulation with no background check, no record of sale and no way for police to trace its next owner until it surfaces in another investigation. Cases like this one, in the El Paso–southern New Mexico corridor along Interstate 10, also sit on one of the busiest freight and border-enforcement routes in the country.
For residents of Alamogordo and El Paso, the practical effect is that a repeat offender prosecutors describe as intent on converting stolen guns into drug money is off the street for a decade and a half. Because Camu pleaded guilty, there will be no trial and no appeal of a conviction; the sentence closes the case. Federal prisoners serve their time under the federal system, which has no parole, so the 180-month term will run in a federal facility.
The case also lands as federal and state officers across the border region continue to target repeat violent offenders who obtain guns illegally. Prosecutors presented Camu's sentence — the maximum on every count — as the justice system's answer to a man who, despite seven felony convictions, kept returning to the conduct that produced them.