http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/28/firefighter-slayings/1796797/GREECE, N.Y. -- A 24-year-old woman was arrested Friday in connection with two of the firearms used in the Christmas Eve shooting of four volunteer firefighters.
Around 1:40 p.m., New York State Police, Webster Police and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives descended on the home where Dawn Nguyen and her mother, Dawn Welsher, were staying. Nguyen was taken out of the home in handcuffs.
Senior Investigator James Newell of the state police said Nguyen was charged with offering a false instrument for filing.
Nguyen is also facing federal charges for allegedly lying about the purchase of the semiautomatic .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle, equipped with a combat-style flash suppressor, and the .12-gauge Mossberg shotgun used in Monday's killing two first responders and the wounding of two others. Nguyen is not connected to a .22-caliber pistol also recovered.
U.S. Attorney William Hochul Jr. said at a 4 p.m. ET press conference that Nguyen bought the guns on June 6, 2010, from a Gander Mountain store in Henrietta, south of Rochester. He said she bought them on behalf of William Spengler Jr., a former neighbor in Webster who set fire to his home and ambushed first responders before dawn Monday.
As as a convicted felon, Spengler was banned from owning guns. He served 17 years in state prison for killing his grandmother with a hammer in 1980. Nguyen lived next door to Spengler in 2008, in the house where he killed his grandmother.
"It is sometimes referred to acting as a 'straw purchaser' and that is exactly what today's complaint alleges," Hochul said.
Hochul indicated that in his rambling suicide note, Spengler revealed how he got the guns.
Nguyen's lawyer, Dave Palmiere, said that his client "purchased the weapons legally, and they were stolen," but that she doesn't recall whether she reported the the to police.
