State Police arrested a female friend of a crazed upstate firefighter shooter yesterday for allegedly buying him the guns he used to kill two smoke eaters during a Christmas Eve attack.
Dawn Nguyen, 24, a former neighbor of William Spengler Jr., allegedly purchased a .223 Bushmaster AR-15 and a 12-gauge shotgun for the wild-eyed manic in 2010, knowing full well that he couldn’t buy the guns himself because he was a convicted felon.
Spengler picked out the weapons himself and went to the sporting goods store with Nguyen when she bought him the guns, said US Attorney William Hochul.
“She told the seller of these guns, Gander Mountain in Henrietta, NY, that she was to be the true owner and buyer of the guns instead of William Spengler,” he said. “It is absolutely against federal law to provide any materially false information related to the acquisition of firearms.”
Nguyen was nabbed at 1 p.m. at her house in upstate Greece and charged with falsifying business records in the first degree and knowingly making false statements in the purchase of a firearm, sources said.
Spengler, 62, deliberately set a fire at his family’s home in the Rochester suburb of Webster on Monday and then shot four firemen who responded to the blaze using the AR-15 Nguyen bought him.
Two of the firemen died. Two others suffered serious wounds, and a fifth was hit by shrapnel.
Spengler also killed his sister, Cheryl, 67, whose charred body was found in the home, which the siblings had lived in together since their mom died in October.
Spengler ended his mad ambush by killing himself. Spengler left behind a note that said: “I still have to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down and do what I like doing best: killing people.”
The note also said the guns had been bought for him by a neighbor’s daughter.
Nguyen and her mother, Dawn Welsher, lived next door to Spengler in 2008. It was not clear why she would have bought the guns for the known killer.
Nguyen’s brother, Steven, reportedly claimed Spengler stole the guns.
The Bushmaster is the same assault rifle used by Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook school massacre.
Spengler had been barred from owning guns after serving 17 years in prison on manslaughter charges for killing his grandmother.
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