Ghost gun nursery
3D-printed arsenal in E. Harlem
An 18-year-old man allegedly manufactured “ghost guns” from an East Harlem day care run by his mother — where cops seized 3Dprinted weapons and firearm parts, NYPD officials said Wednesday.
Karon Jamal Coley and two other suspects, both minors, were arrested Tuesday following the raid on East 117th Street near Madison Avenue, Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, said at a press conference.
It came less than two weeks after a 1-year-old boy was exposed to fentanyl and died at a Bronx daycare center that authorities said housed a drug-dealing operation.
“This is a heartbreaking scenario of thinking that you’re dropping your child off to a place of safe haven, just to find out that it was a dangerous environment where someone was making a gun inside,” Mayor Adams said Wednesday.
Investigators uncovered two completed 3D-printed weapons and one nearly finished assault pistol, as well as a 3D printer, 3Dprinting tools and plastic filament in the home where Coley’s mom runs a licensed child-care facility, Weiner said. A single 3D-printed lower receiver — a central part of assault weapons — was also discovered.
Cops also discovered an “obviously maltreated and neglected dog” — which police sources described as a tiny female pit bull — inside a locked room, according to Weiner.
Investigators began to probe the secret operation after learning “a group of individuals, including some minors . . . were purchasing ghost gun parts from online retailers,” as well as the materials “required to print 3D firearm components,” Weiner told reporters.
‘Preying on our children’
Coley was hit with a slew of weapons charges, including criminal possession of a loaded firearm, four counts of criminal possession of a weapon and acting in a manner injurious to a child, cops said. The names, exact ages and charges against the two minors nabbed with Coley weren’t released by cops.
“These folks are preying on our children,” Adams said at the press conference announcing the sting. “We have an 18-year-old in his room with a 3D printer. He’s not making little robotic toys, he’s making guns. That should be scary to everyone. That is extremely frightening.”
The number of privately made firearms recovered in the Big Apple has increased significantly over the last three years.
Such weapons are untraceable — as they don’t have serial numbers — and can be fashioned with a 3D printer or assembled piecemeal with shipped parts. A total of 436 ghost guns were taken off city streets in 2022 and 290 so far this year, police officials said.