{"id":332541,"date":"2010-02-17T19:15:23","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T00:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/press-releases\/man-pleads-guilty-in-antioch-township-weapons-case"},"modified":"2010-02-17T19:15:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T00:15:23","slug":"man-pleads-guilty-in-antioch-township-weapons-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/332541","title":{"rendered":"Man pleads guilty in Antioch Township weapons case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of two Antioch Township men charged with hoarding guns, explosives and drugs in their house pleaded guilty to a reduced charge Wednesday in Lake County Circuit Court.<\/p>\n<p>John Thomas, 24, was placed on probation for two years after pleading guilty to unlawful storage of explosives during a hearing before Circuit Judge Fred Foreman.<\/p>\n<p>Assistant State&#8217;s Attorney Scott Hoffert said Thomas and his father, Burl Thomas, were both at their residence in the 25000 block of West Linden Lane when police arrived with a search warrant Sept. 2.<\/p>\n<p>Inside the house, police found more than 30 weapons, including a live military AT4 rocket launcher, semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns.<\/p>\n<p>They also found a half-pound of dynamite, blasting caps and detonator cord.<\/p>\n<p>Two ounces of cocaine, about a pound of marijuana and 500 pills of prescription drugs were also seized during the raid.<\/p>\n<p>Both were charged with armed violence, possession of explosives, cocaine and marijuana and unlawful use of a weapon, but Hoffert agreed to drop those charges against John Thomas in exchange for his guilty plea.<\/p>\n<p>Burl Thomas was found psychologically unfit for trial in December and is undergoing treatment at a state Department of Human Services hospital.<\/p>\n<p>A report on the progress of that treatment is scheduled to be presented to Foreman on March 23.<\/p>\n<p>Before John Thomas&#8217; guilty plea was accepted, Hoffert had him sworn in and he testified that all the contraband in the house belonged to his father.<\/p>\n<p>Burl Thomas has pleaded not guilty to the original charges and faces a prison sentence of 15 to 30 years if convicted when he is released from treatment.<\/p>\n<p>The maximum penalty John Thomas could have faced for the unlawful storage of explosive charge is five years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on <a title=\"Man pleads guilty in Antioch Township weapons case\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dailyherald.com\/story\/?id=359982&amp;src=143\"  rel='nofollow'>DailyHerald.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Distributed via <a href=\"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\" rel='nofollow'>Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/pJH653VXAhr5cH6td-BgFHAWap0\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/pJH653VXAhr5cH6td-BgFHAWap0\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/pJH653VXAhr5cH6td-BgFHAWap0\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/pJH653VXAhr5cH6td-BgFHAWap0\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.chicagopressrelease.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?a=MSWfi8DpfZU:OcufVaf4xnI:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.chicagopressrelease.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?a=MSWfi8DpfZU:OcufVaf4xnI:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.chicagopressrelease.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?a=MSWfi8DpfZU:OcufVaf4xnI:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?i=MSWfi8DpfZU:OcufVaf4xnI:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/windycitynews\/~4\/MSWfi8DpfZU\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of two Antioch Township men charged with hoarding guns, explosives and drugs in their house pleaded guilty to a reduced charge Wednesday in Lake County Circuit Court. John Thomas, 24, was placed on probation for two years after pleading guilty to unlawful storage of explosives during a hearing before Circuit Judge Fred Foreman. Assistant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}