July 8, 1957
Boy Tells Police he Abandoned Stolen Firearms
San Antonio police Sunday night captured a 16-year-old suspect sought in the armed robbery of El Paso’s International Museum.
The youth, who allegedly bound Mrs. Charles Newman, museum custodian, and a maid before fleeing with several valuable guns taken from display cases June 20, offered no resistance to arrest.
He said he was hitchhiking back to El Paso to surrender and that he had left the guns in a Meridian, Miss., hotel room, Acting Detective Sgt. Al Lucero said.
The teenaged robber, carrying a small black automatic on the day he robbed the museum near his Rio Grande Street home, was unarmed when he was arrested.
Detectives Henry R. Zunker and Jesse Adame of the San Antonio Police Department’s robbery detail picked up the youth.
Zunker said Sunday night that he recognized the suspect from pictures and descriptions circulated throughout the Southwest after the coolly-executed noon-time stick-up in which the boy allegedly threatened Mrs. Newman with death if she screamed.
SPOTTED YOUTH
Zunker told The Times by telephone that he previously had seen the young man while he (Zunker) worked a spare-time job as a clerk in a San Antonio sporting goods shop.
“We saw him walking down Soledad Street Sunday night and told him we’d like to ask him some questions,” Zunker said. “He admitted pulling the job right away.
“Then he told us he was headed back to El Paso, hitchhiking, to give himself up.”
Asked if he had sold the four rifles and two vintage-age pistols or had given them away, the boy said he had simply abandoned them in a hotel room.
He was aware police were looking for him, he told Zunker and Adame.
The detectives were taking a statement of the boy’s activities from him Sunday night and said he would be transferred to the Bexar County Detention Home to be held until called for by El Paso officers.
Sheriff’s officers were expected to go to San Antonio for him Monday. A warrant charging him with delinquency and robbery was filed soon after
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