Airsoft Gun Triggers Officer Response in Downers Grove: Police Blotter

A limo driver was temporarily detained by Downers Grove police while they checked out a report of a man with a gun.

Officers at about 12:30 p.m. May 6 conducted a high-risk traffic stop of the driver's white Lincoln MKT limo on the 4500 block of Middaugh Avenue. The driver was cooperative as he exited the vehicle and was placed in the back of a squad car.

Police searched the vehicle and found a disassembled airsoft gun in a bag behind the front passenger seat. Filing tools were located on the passenger seat.

"(The driver) advised that he was waiting in the area to do a pickup … pulled over and began filing down a piece of metal for his air soft gun," a police report for this incident said. "(The driver) was apologetic and said he didn't realize there was a school close by."

A man walking his dog reported the driver to police because he appeared to have a dark metal item that resembled a gun. The driver did not try to hide the item when the man passed by, so he was not sure if it was truly a gun, the report said.

The incident occurred about a block from Herrick Middle School while class was in session, according to the school's 2012-13 calendar. There is also an elementary school about one block west of where the incident took place.

Airsoft guns shoot plastic pellets and other projectiles, but are sometimes designed or modified to look like real firearms. In 2008, National Public Radio broadcast a story about Airsoft guns and how police have fatally shot boys who were out in public after their realistic toy guns were mistaken for actual guns.

Two air soft-related incidents in Kane County resulted in and Jan. 14 of this year. A man also filed a lawsuit in April against a Romeoville woman, claiming her daughter shot him in the eye with an Airsoft gun.

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