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Lorenzo Beechman faces charges of carrying a loaded firearm without a license (third offense), airport security violations, illegal possession of a firearm without a license with a prior violent offense, and illegal possession of ammunition, the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said. Police are holding Beechman without bail pending a dangerousness hearing, the prosecutor announced.
Around 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 28, TSA agents alerted state troopers that a man had put a bag on the screener's conveyor belt with a loaded .22 pistol inside covered by a paper bag, the prosecutor said.
When agents asked him about the bag, Beechman denied it was his and walked to the gate with his child, TSA officials said.
That story fell apart when officers found several items that belonged to Beechman inside the carry-on bag, and surveillance video showed him put the luggage on the conveyor belt, authorities said.
Police arrested him and turned the child over to a relative.
Beechman has prior convictions involving firearms, including armed and masked robbery, officials said. He also has pending charges of resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, breaking and entering, and larceny from a building, the prosecutor said.
“It’s incredibly brazen to think that you can move a gun —in this case, a loaded gun— through an airport security machine without it being detected," District Attorney Kevin Hayden said. "It’s sad that this man placed a child in the position of having to witness the result of his brazen and dangerous action."
This is far from the first instance of someone trying to sneak a gun onto a plane at Boston Logan Airport. In fact, TSA agents confiscated a record number of firearms from passengers at the airport this year, the agency announced. The 31 guns seized is 11 more than the previous high set in 2018.
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