EAST LYME — An 18-year-old Bristol man was arrested November 4 in the theft of a loaded handgun left in a Henny Penny restroom on West Main Street five months earlier, East Lyme Police announced Thursday.
Elijah Bermudez was charged by warrant with theft of a firearm and carrying a pistol without a permit. Police said he was held on a court-set $20,000 bond. The charges are allegations, and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
The investigation began June 5, when a customer left her firearm on a restroom shelf and returned to find it missing. According to police, surveillance footage showed one man enter the restroom afterward, then leave the business in a tan Chevrolet Malibu.
The footage did not give investigators a license plate number. Police said they searched the department’s Flock license-plate reader records for a matching vehicle, then identified its registered owner as the person seen on the store video. Investigators later obtained warrants for cellphone information and footage from the vehicle’s dash camera.
The department’s announcement did not say whether the firearm had been recovered or give Bermudez’s next court date.