A Pennsylvania man who was arrested for trying to drive into New York City with a cache of weapons says he doesn’t regret his actions but calls the presence of the guns an “oversight.”
(FOX)- John Cramsey, 51, of Emmaus, and two co-defendants were detained in June as they prepared to enter the Holland Tunnel in a truck carrying a military-style rifle, a shotgun and five handguns. Their attorneys have said the police search was illegal. All three have pleaded not guilty to weapons charges.
Cramsey, whose daughter died of a heroin overdose in February, posted online shortly before the arrest that he was heading to New York to “rescue” a 16-year-old girl whose friend had overdosed.
He told The (Wilkes-Barre) Citizens’ Voice in an interview that he forgot that he had weapons in his truck when he set out to try to help the girl. Still, he said he doesn’t regret his actions.
Cramsey said he got a call on Father’s Day weekend — the four-month anniversary since his daughter’s death and “the worst Father’s Day of my life” — saying a young woman from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, had died of a heroin overdose in New York and a teenage friend who found her dead was begging for help to escape. The caller, a former camp counselor of the teen, played a voicemail she said was from the girl, he said.
Cramsey rushed out of the house, he said, forgetting that he had the weapons in his work truck. The owner of a now-shuttered indoor shooting range, he compared them to a carpenter having hammers.
“I didn’t take firearms up there to do anything illegal. They were in my truck because that’s my business. It was an oversight,” he said.
(Photo Credit: NBCNewYork)