Employee charged with stealing guns from passengers

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/09/em ... latestnews

A worker at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has been charged with stealing shotguns, revolvers and other weapons from the checked luggage of passengers who had connections through the busy Twin Cities airport.

David Vang, 23, of St. Paul faces 11 felony counts, including 10 counts of theft of a firearm. He will be making his first court appearance April 25 in Hennepin County.

Pat Hogan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, said Monday that Vang was employed by a Texas firm under contract with Delta Airlines to maintain the belt on which checked baggage traveled. Hogan said authorities learned in September that weapons including firearms and crossbows were being stolen, so airport security set up surveillance cameras.

Firearms must be packed in separate cases and scanned as a separate piece of luggage, so authorities can determine when a case containing a weapon is removed from one airplane and placed on another.

"In this case, only connecting bags were being pilfered," Hogan said. "Weapons were scanned as coming into (Minneapolis-St. Paul) but not scanned as going into the aircraft, so that's what alerted us that there was an issue here."

A review of footage showed Vang removing items from checked luggage and taking them to an unsecured employee parking ramp where his wife was waiting in a vehicle, the criminal complaint said. His wife, Vue Xiong, has also been charged with one count of felony theft.

Vang was arrested in October and is no longer working at the airport, Hogan said. The thefts are believed to span from July 2012 to the arrest, the airport said in a statement.

Several boxes containing firearms, a crossbow, iPads, laptops, mobile phones, jewelry and other electronics were removed from Vang's apartment, the complaint said. Authorities said he had 716 stolen items, valued at more than $84,000.

Online court records do not list an attorney for Vang. A working home phone number for Vang was not available Monday.

According to the complaint, Vang initially claimed the weapons and other items fell out of luggage as it came down the line, but later admitted to stealing, saying he had been doing it since last summer.

"When asked why he did it, Defendant Vang stated that he just wanted the items," the complaint said.
Hogan said thefts from luggage are rare, but the airport recommends travelers place valuables such as jewelry in their carry-on luggage. Weapons, however, must be checked.

"Fortunately, we don't deal with this kind of situation very often," Hogan said. "Once we found out about it, we were able to track him down and bring him to justice."