West Des Moines police arrested a man accused of smashing open a gun case at the West Des Moines Walmart late Saturday night and fleeing with stolen shotguns and ammunition.
Cody Allen Gebauer, 27, of Des Moines was arrested at about 2:45 p.m. Sunday, according to West Des Moines Police Department Sgt. Anthony Giampolo. Gebauer faces charges of second-degree theft and third-degree criminal mischief in the incident.
ThePerryNews.com broke the story at 1:30 a.m. Sunday. For the sake of public safety, ThePerryNews.com reported an active shooter after radio traffic by the Iowa State Patrol and Westcom indicated shots were fired.
“We believe maybe there were some shots fired,” Giampolo said. “I can almost assure you those words were said at one point because I think one of the officers may have felt that that was going on at some point in time because we were out there quite a long time.”
Gebauer fled the scene at 6365 Stagecoach Drive and was considered armed and dangerous. Law enforcement engaged the assistance of a K-9 tracking animal to follow the scent eastward, but the scent was lost about 1 a.m. A flair was then deployed to assist in the search, and air support was called in, but Gebauer was not found until later Sunday.
Later media accounts omitted the reported gunfire, but Giampolo confirmed the accuracy of ThePerryNews.com’s original story.
“I’m pretty sure that you heard those words (“Shots fired”) from somebody here that was in the area of the incident at that time,” Giampolo told ThePerryNews.com. “I think that somebody had heard a series of booms, but we’re not even sure they were shots fired at this point. We were never able to corroborate any information to tie that together to anything at this point. We had several agencies out here helping us that morning, but we cannot confirm that they were actually shots fired at all, and they definitely weren’t from this suspect because we recovered all the shotguns. They all had trigger guards in place and everything like that, so there was probably no way he was going to be the guy that was doing anything like that.”
Gebauer was arrested after police reviewed surveillance footage from the crime scene, Giampolo said.
“I think the investigators did some work with Walmart and worked with their surveillance cameras,” he said, “and they got some kind of lead that led to this gentleman.”
Gebauer was booked at the Dallas County Jail Sunday.
ThePerryNews.com will update this story as information becomes available.
