Police say a Lyndonville woman handed a revolver that appears to be the one used in the fatal shooting of a man earlier this month to another person and told them to get rid of it.
Heather Megaro, 42, appeared for a federal court hearing Monday by video from the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington. She faces a charge of possessing a firearm as a drug user, according to court documents.
“Most troubling,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Fuller wrote in a filing, “one of the firearms she possessed appears to be the weapon used in the murder” of Vincent Keithan, 44, of St. Johnsbury.
A complaint filed in support of the charge against Megaro also stated, “this weapon was dipped in alcohol and the defendant asked a witness if the witness could get rid of that firearm.”
Nobody has been charged in Keithan’s shooting death, which took place the morning of March 1 in a parking lot outside Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. Johnsbury.
Keithan’s death has been ruled a homicide, according to police.
Jerry Ramirez, 35, of Brooklyn, New York, faces a charge of aggravated assault connected to the case for allegedly hitting a woman, Allison Roslund, in the head while she was inside a car in the hospital parking lot moments before the shooting.
Keithan had been in the car with Roslund at that time but then he got out of the car and started to run away, while Ramirez, who Roslund told police she knew as “Mike,” chased him.
Roslund, according to court documents, said she then lost sight of the two men but then heard a gunshot “and she knew Keithan was gone.”
After the shooting, Ramirez went to Megaro’s home and they went into her bedroom, according to an affidavit filed by Special Agent Tam Vieth of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Cassandra Rich, who also was at that home, told authorities Megaro then came out of the bedroom, gave her the .22-caliber handgun “that was dipped in alcohol” and told her to get rid of it, according to the affidavit, which became public Monday.
Rich told investigators that the handgun was in a black purse and it could be found at a residence in Calais, the affidavit stated. During a search of that residence March 4, the affidavit stated, investigators found a .22-caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver.
On the same day, a search of Megaro’s residence, according to the affidavit, led authorities to find “multiple” firearms inside a closet as well as heroin, cocaine and fentanyl in the bedroom and bathroom.
An unknown make and model .223-caliber rifle and a Derya Arms 12-gauge shotgun were among the firearms seized at the residence, according to the affidavit.
Megaro’s court hearing Monday was continued for at least another day so pretrial services could gather more information ahead of a detention hearing. At that detention hearing, prosecutors say they will be seeking to hold Megaro in custody while the case is pending.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the gauge of one of the firearms seized at the residence. Due to incorrect information in the police affidavit, the manufacturer’s name was also misstated.
