Gun mystery unsolved

POST FALLS - You never know what you're going to find when you open a stall door inside a public bathroom.

Ed DeGroot said he was "stunned" when he opened such a door at Cabela's on Thursday. There lay a loaded Ruger .38-caliber pistol with a round chambered.

"I went to the middle stall and you couldn't miss it," DeGroot said. "It was on the floor right below the commode. It blew me away."

DeGroot said the gun didn't look real to him at first, but when he tapped the side of it with his foot he could tell it was the real deal due to its weight.

Not wanting his fingerprints on the gun, the Everett, Wash., man, who was shopping at the outdoors retail store with his father Bob of Spokane Valley, gently handled it with toilet paper and gave it to a Cabela's employee.

"I picked it up by the butt of the gun and took it straight to the lobby," DeGroot said. "Here I was, holding a loaded gun out with my arm completely extended."

A Cabela's employee rendered the gun safe, then turned it over to police.

Post Falls police Capt. Greg McLean said on Tuesday that the gun's owner has not been found or come forward. Investigators are puzzled over why the owner has not attempted to claim the gun.

"How do you not know that you're missing your gun?" McLean said.

Bob DeGroot said he thought at first that perhaps someone took the pistol to the store to try to trade it or sell it and simply forgot it in the bathroom. Then he thought otherwise.

"Normally if you're trading a gun it's not loaded with a bullet in the chamber," Bob said. "And, if someone forgot it or dropped it, they would have come back to claim it."

Ed later thought about the multiple scenarios that could have happened if he had not found it first. He said he didn't realize the gun was loaded until he spoke with a Cabela's employee later when he provided his contact information.

"There's a lot of possibilities with a loaded gun sitting on the floor," he said, adding that no one else was in the bathroom and that the pistol was found around 12:15 p.m.

PFPD is collaborating with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives trying to find information about the gun and working with Cabela's to review surveillance to find the owner.

Police ran the gun's serial number through the National Crime Information Center and it came up clear with no information revealed.

"If it was stolen, some information would have likely popped up," McLean said.

Guns have to be registered if they are sold at a dealership, but not if they are sold between private parties.

"It may have changed hands multiple times depending on how old the gun is," McLean said.

McLean said fingerprints on the gun could not be pulled due to the texture of the pistol.

PFPD declined to release a photo of the pistol, citing the need for people to describe it if someone wants to claim it.

McLean said the police department is thankful for DeGroot's discovery.

"A small child could have picked it up and something traumatic could have happened," McLean said. "Or maybe someone picks it up and decides to keep it. We're glad it was turned back in and not in a child's hands."