Man gets more than 7 years for role in train heist that netted over 100 guns

A convicted felon was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for stealing over 100 guns from a cargo train that was parked overnight on the city’s South Side.

On April 12, 2015, 47-year-old Alexander Peebles and seven other men burglarized the train while it was parked in an Avalon Park neighborhood railyard, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois. The train was traveling from a Ruger factory in New Hampshire to Spokane, Washington.

During the heist, the group broke locks on the train car and spent over four hours unloading 104 guns, which they took to a stash house in the Englewood neighborhood, prosecutors said. As of Tuesday, 33 of the stolen firearms had been recovered at various locations, including 17 guns that were recovered at crime scenes in Chicago and the surrounding area.

An investigation into the burglary led to charges against 11 people, including Peebles, prosecutors said.

In 2016, Peebles pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a stolen firearm, prosecutors said. He was recently sentenced to 90 months in prison.

The case’s ten other defendants have also been sentenced, prosecutors said.

Frederick Lewis was sentenced to 15 years in prison; Terry Walker was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison; Andrew Shelton was sentenced to ten years in prison; Patrick Edwards was sentenced to eleven years in prison; Nathan Driggers was sentenced to eight years in prison; Dandre Moody was sentenced to seven years and nine months in prison; Warren Gates was sentenced to five years and three months in prison; Elgin Lipscomb was sentenced to five years in prison; Marcel Turner was sentenced to four years in prison; and Lori Shelton was sentenced to three years probation, prosecutors said.