By Kevin Krause
Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Dallas seized three homemade firearms from a Waxahachie man last summer after being tipped off by the man’s son.
Agents took one 22-caliber rifle and two 22-caliber pistols from the home of Bennie Nephous Adams, 70, on the 700 block of Becky Lane in July while executing a search warrant, federal records show. They also took a three-ring notebook with “drawings and manufacturing specifications.”
No charges have been filed. Adams could not be reached for comment. The son, Jesse Lieuallen, said he made the report to ATF because his father has been making untraceable fully-automatic machine guns for years. He also says his father has dementia and has threatened to shoot his brother.
Lieuallen said the Ellis County Sheriff’s Office wouldn’t do anything about it. He said he wants ATF to charge his father for illegally manufacturing the weapons. Andrew Young, an ATF spokesman, said the matter is the subject of an ongoing investigation and that he could not comment.
Lieuallen told ATF in June that his father had a machine gun at his home and that he saw it a month before. But the search warrant did not indicate that agents found one there. “He stated that he observed the weapon fire and that it would empty the magazine with one pull of the trigger,” a federal affidavit said. “Mr. Lieuallen stated that the firearm would fire one hundred rounds in five seconds.”