BURLINGTON — Police said they have recovered a Vermont State Police patrol rifle that was stolen in Rutland earlier this week, finding the firearm in a pull-off on Route 7 in Arlington on Thursday afternoon.
But how someone got into a trooper’s cruiser, stole the vehicle and removed the loaded Sig Sauer from a secure gun rack inside it remains under investigation.
Police are trying to determine whether the cruiser was locked, while also tracking down how the weapon ended up about 45 miles away from where it was stolen.
Timothy Gabriel, 29, with recent addresses in Rutland and Burlington, faces a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm in connection with the theft of the patrol rifle. He has not been charged in the theft of Cpl. Christopher Loyzelle’s fully marked 2021 Ford SUV, which was taken from outside his home in Rutland early Tuesday morning.
The car was discovered not long after it was stolen.
Gabriel was arrested Wednesday afternoon after he was spotted on Cherry Street in Burlington, when the rifle remained “unaccounted for,” police have said. A tip from the public led to its discovery Thursday afternoon, according to Vermont State Police spokesperson Adam Silverman.
State police cruisers are equipped with secure storage racks for police-issued firearms, including the Sig Sauer Model 400 .223-caliber patrol rifle like the one reported stolen, according to a press release about the theft that state police issued on Thursday. Unattended cruisers must be locked and windows secured, according to the agency’s policy, and it’s “standard practice” for rifles secured in cruisers to carry loaded magazines.
Police wrote that a key was left in the cruiser and the ignition was not damaged, but investigators have been “unable to determine whether the cruiser was locked when it was parked overnight in a parking lot in direct sight” from Loyzelle’s home after he got off duty around 2 a.m.
The rack and locking mechanism were damaged during the theft, police wrote. The secure gun racks in cruisers cannot be unlocked with a vehicle key, they said.
Loyzelle’s duty status is unchanged, according to the release.
Newly released charging documents filed in court Thursday and written by state police Sgt. Henry Alberico provided more details about where and how the cruiser was located Tuesday morning outside Belden’s Construction in Rutland.
A little before 7 a.m. Tuesday, the document stated, state police Sgt. Blake Cushing received a text from someone at the shop indicating that the car was parked there.
“(W)e haven’t seen him, but his car windows down which I thought was weird,” said the texter, Jason Swett. “Must’ve got there just before us. Just want to make sure he is ok.”
Police determined the vehicle was assigned to Loyzelle and contacted him, at which point he “looked outside of his residence and discovered that EQ 427 was not where he had parked it hours earlier.”
The driver’s side window had been rolled down; blood was found on the passenger’s side door, rear hatch and within the cruiser; and although a shotgun remained in the damaged gun rack, the rifle was missing, Alberico’s filing stated.
He wrote that a Ford key was located outside the stolen cruiser “on the ground, below the driver’s side door.” Surveillance cameras showed a man walking away from the vehicle about 15 minutes after pulling up, apparently carrying a black rifle, Alberico wrote.
After the image was broadly distributed, several officers identified the man as Gabriel based on “past law enforcement contact,” the filing stated. The clothes he was wearing also matched a description of a retail theft earlier that day in which Gabriel was the suspect.
About a dozen police officers and cruisers surrounded a home on West Street in Rutland in an attempt to locate him, but the hours-long operation ended with no arrest. He was later tracked to Burlington, where he “had to be subdued by troopers,” police said.
During a hearing late Thursday afternoon in federal court in Burlington, Magistrate Judge Kevin Doyle granted Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregory Waples’ request that Gabriel be held in custody while the case against him remains pending.
In a court filing, Waples had stated that Gabriel had taken a bus from Rutland to Burlington “with the intention of leaving the state to avoid prosecution in this case.”
Mary Nerino, a federal public defender representing Gabriel, did not challenge the prosecutor’s request to hold her client in custody. Nerino declined comment on the case following Thursday’s hearing.
Additional charges against Gabriel are possible, according to police. Rutland County State’s Attorney Ian Sullivan is also working with the state police in the ongoing investigation.
Gabriel has multiple felony convictions, including a January 2020 conviction for assault and robbery for which he received a four-to-12 year sentence to serve in prison, according to charging documents. He also had prior grand larceny convictions, the filings showed.
