Chesapeake men face charges in Philadelphia after driving to convention center with guns, police say
Two men from Chesapeake face firearms charges in Philadelphia after police say they drove to the Pennsylvania Convention Center with guns.
Police said the men are ages 42 and 61 but declined to identify them until formalizing charges. A woman was also with them but was not arrested.
On Thursday, the Philadelphia Police Department had received word from the FBI in Norfolk that “individuals with firearms were en route to the Convention Center area operating a silver Hummer truck,” a department spokesman said in an email to The Pilot Friday.
At 10:20 p.m., officers spotted such a truck parked unattended about a block away from the center, where ballots from the presidential election are still being counted.
The officers broadcast that information over police radio. Two bicycle patrol officers then shortly found two men with guns, who they determined did not have valid Pennsylvania permits allowing them to carry.
The 61-year-old was carrying a Beretta 9-millimeter pistol in a holster on his hip, police said at a press conference Friday afternoon. The 42-year-old had a Beretta 40-caliber pistol concealed under his jacket.
They were arrested and acknowledged the Hummer was theirs, police said. An AR-style rifle was found inside the truck. There was ammunition in the guns and the truck, officials said.
Philadelphia police are working with the FBI on the investigation, they said.
A law enforcement source told the Philadelphia Inquirer that police had been told Thursday to be “on the lookout for a mother, son and another man from Virginia Beach traveling to the Philadelphia region to ‘straighten things out’ as vote counting continued.” The alert said the people traveling from Virginia were believed to have have an AR-15 rifle in the car and were suspected of recently purchasing large amounts of ammo and AR-15 parts, the newspaper reported.
The Inquirer also reported that the Hummer displayed stickers supporting the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which purports that America is being led by Satan-worshipping pedophiles who are part of a global child sex-trafficking ring, and that President Trump is secretly working to stop them.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said at the press conference that officials did not have any indication that “the story is bigger than these two individuals.” He declined to comment on a possible QAnon connection.
Citing law enforcement sources, an NPR affiliate in Philadelphia identified one of the men as Antonio Paredes LaMotta.
LaMotta, a 61-year-old from Chesapeake according to public records, claims to be a security contractor and former master at arms in the U.S. Army, according to a blog under his name. When asked to confirm his service on Friday, an Army representative said it usually takes 24 hours to verify.
LaMotta worked in facility maintenance for the city of Chesapeake from August 2014 to May 2019, a city spokesman confirmed.
The long resume on LaMotta’s blog also claims he’s completed counterterrorism training and is crowd and riot control-certified in Germany, that he was a karate instructor at the Mt. Trashmore YMCA in Virginia Beach in the ’90s and had “NATO Secret Clearance” in 1978. He claims to speak Japanese, Pashto, German, Spanish and “Filipino.”
In a cached message from his Facebook page — which appears to have been taken down — LaMotta wrote about his support for the QAnon theory.
LaMotta also supported State Sen. Amanda Chase’s run for governor, according to a cached Facebook page. In a screenshot from television news found online, LaMotta can be seen behind her. A phone call to Chase’s office seeking comment was not immediately returned.
On Twitter, LaMotta in July had linked to an online fundraiser for “Virginia Armed Patriots," a page that’s since been taken down.
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