Woodridge Man Brings Loaded Weapons On Metra Train
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Four loaded guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
A suburban man arrested on a Metra train to Chicago. Why was he carrying all those weapons?
He's telling his story only to CBS 2.
Mike Garafolo said he was going to visit his daughter. So why did a Woodridge man have three loaded guns tucked in his wasitband and a rifle?
CBS 2's Roseanne Tellez talked to the man and has the story from the Mokena Metra station where he was arrested.
To be clear, it is illegal to take a gun on any form of public transportation in Illinois. That includes the train stations and the parking lots. But the 55-year-old former Marine said he wasn't sure. So when his car broke down as he was leaving a shooting range, he decided at the last minute to hop on a Metra train.
"If I'd had known it was illegal, or if he (Metra personnel) indicated it was, I wouldn't have gone on the train,"said Garafolo who told a Metra conductor he had a concealed carry card and asked if he could board the Chicago-bound Metra train with a pellet rifle.
"And he waved me on the train," Garafolo said.
But just a few stops down the line...
"All of a sudden there's a cop at my shoulder practically yelling at me, throwing me up against the seat, handcuffing me," he said.
A picture taken through a train window and posted to Twitter showed a handcuffed Garofalo and police holding the pellet rifle. Metra police also found three loaded handguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Garafalo showed CBS 2 his receipt from the shooting range and said it's not unusual to take hundreds of rounds to the range.
But should he have known better than to board a train?
CBS 2 did find a "no handgun" sign on the door at the station. Metra confirmed they are not allowed trains.
"You've got other places where they put gun racks on their pick-up trucks and no one thinks twice when they go into the store," Garafolo said.
Metra denies the conductor ever said it was OK. Garafolo returns to court in November facing misdemeanor gun charges at which time he hopes to get his weapons back.
