Firearm Registered to Christopher Dorner Recovered In Crime Tourism Case Not LAPD Gun

The weapon recovered when Beverly Hills and federal investigators searched the Santa Monica AirbNb rental of so-called crime tourists who pulled off two brazen watch heists earlier this month was registered to notorious ex-LAPD cop Christopher Dorner, but was not his service weapon, the department's Chief said Tuesday.

At a meeting Tuesday morning with the Police Commission , LAPD Chief Dominic Choi was asked about several high-profile crimes in Los Angeles, including the brazen gunpoint watch heist on the patio of the Four Seasons Beverly Wilshire hotel where a British tourist visiting with his wife and twin daughters had a pistol pointed at his head by professional thieves who ripped a million-dollar watch off his wrist.

It was the second gunpoint watch theft in Beverly Hills that the duo, visiting from South America as "crime tourists," pulled off in a single week this month, federal prosecutors say. During the investigation into that robbery crew, police recovered a  "Glock 21 .45 caliber handgun, bearing serial number HAZ636, loaded with a magazine, underneath a pillow, inside the pillowcase." The gun had belonged to Dorner, according to a federal criminal complaint.

Cho said "the firearm "was once registered to Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer," and confirmed it had been recovered at the "Airbnb of two South American crime tourists alleged to have held up a couple at gunpoint at a Beverly Hills hotel."

But, Choi insists, "the department is not aware of how Mr. Dorner's weapon came in the hands of these individual. I do want to say, and that's being investigated by federal prosecutors, but I want to say that this weapon was not a city owned weapon, and it was not his duty weapon."

Dorner made national headlines in 2013 when he went on a wild killing spree targeting fellow law enforcement officers, part of a manifesto in which he declared war on his department, their families and their associates unless the department admitted publicly he was fired in retaliation for reporting excessive force.

The disgruntled cop murdered two police officers, the daughter of a former LAPD captain and her fiancé, and wounded three others before he was shot dead in a gun battle with San Bernardino Sheriffs at a cabin in Big Bear. The cabin then exploded into flames.

Eduardo Padron Rojas, 19, of Venezuela, and Colombian national, Jamer Mauricio Sepulveda Salazar, 21, are facing federal charges in connection with the watch heists.