Man Orders Flat-Screen TV, Gets Gun Instead
WASHINGTON (WJZ) -- Mail order mistake. A Washington, D.C. man ordered a flat screen TV online but got a semi-automatic weapon delivered to his home instead.
Denise Koch reports he wants answers.
It's not what Seth Horvitz expected to find inside the package he ordered from Amazon.com.
"Even as I opened it, there were some metal parts and I thought, `Oh, maybe these go with the TV?' and then, of course, as I opened the foam up a little further, it was kind of a huge shock to see that this was a military-grade rifle," said Horvitz.
He's still trying to process how a UPS driver could drop off such a deadly weapon on his doorstep and in a city where these kinds of guns are illegal.
"How could this happen? How could this mix-up happen?" Horvitz said.
The UPS label did have Horvitz's name and address on it but the invoice inside the box was made out to a gun store in Pennsylvania.
Horvitz didn't know what to do. He knew that having this gun was illegal in D.C. and that it's illegal to drive with it in your car, even if you're driving to a police station. So he called police and they came out to his apartment.
"Not something they encounter every day, for sure," he said.
D.C. police confiscated the weapon and they say they're still investigating how it ended up at Horvitz's apartment. It turns out it was a top of the line Sig Sauer Sig 716, a high-caliber semi-automatic rifle that sells for more than $2,000. Horvitz got it for free but doesn't want to keep it.
"I would like to know how this type of mixup could take place, especially what's going recently, these mass shootings. I don't want to be in a situation where this type of weapon can just show up on someone's doorstep accidentally. I would like to see more precautions taken," Horvitz said.
He ordered the TV through a third-party seller on Amazon. So far, he says, neither the seller nor Amazon nor UPS is taking responsibility for the mistake.
