Drugs, guns found in vehicle in county lot

An unrelated automatic fire alarm at the Carbon County Courthouse led to the arrest of an Albrightsville man who had weapons and drugs in his vehicle in the county parking lot.

Denom M. Krall, 38, of Arapahoe Road has been charged by Jim Thorpe police with recklessly endangering another person and unlawful possession of a controlled substance after a handgun and an assault rifle with a high capacity drum magazine, as well as methamphetamine were found in his vehicle while he was there for work.

On Tuesday morning, a heat sensor in an elevator shaft in the courthouse sparked an automatic fire alarm, resulting in the evacuation of the courthouse employees, Sheriff Anthony Harvilla said.

“When any fire alarm goes off, the people need to be evacuated because we don’t know the nature of the alarm,” he said, adding that employees have various locations around the courthouse as points of meeting in the case of evacuations.

In this instance, some of the employees went to wait for the all clear in the county parking lot.

Harvilla said a sheriff’s deputy spotted a handgun in an illegally parked vehicle in the lot that was still running with its windows down and contacted Jim Thorpe police.

According to an affidavit filed by Jim Thorpe police, as well as a release from police Chief Joseph Schatz, officers were dispatched to the parking lot for a suspicious vehicle near the train station.

Police found the vehicle in a handicap spot with the handgun, which was registered to Krall, in plain sight, as well as a Ruger mini-14 assault rifle that was fully loaded with a 100-round magazine in the cargo area of the vehicle. The assault rifle was not registered to Krall.

During the investigation, a man, later identified as Krall, approached police and claimed the vehicle and weapons were his.

Police said that Krall smelled of alcohol and informed them he was employed by Reading and Northern Railroad and was there to install a security system at the train station ticket booth.

He allowed police to do a search of his vehicle and, police also found 1.2 grams of crystal meth inside Krall’s wallet. A preliminary breath test indicated Krall’s BAC was 0.052.

Krall admitted that it was his meth and added that he forgot the assault rifle was in his vehicle.

Krall was taken into custody and police determined he failed to secure his vehicle and the weapons before leaving his vehicle unattended, and as a result, created a “substantial risk to those evacuating the courthouse and bystanders in the county lot.”

Schatz said in his release that police determined the incident involving Krall and the courthouse evacuation for the fire alarm activations were not related.

Krall was arraigned before District Judge Eric Schrantz Tuesday afternoon and bail was set at $50,000, 10 percent monetary.

He is scheduled for a preliminary hearing before Schrantz on Nov. 22.