Police: ‘Warehouse of weapons’ found in North Stamford home

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STAMFORD — A “warehouse of weapons” and live explosive devices were found during a raid of a North Stamford home, the culmination of a monthlong investigation by city’s Narcotics and Organized Crime Squad, police said Friday.

The FBI is assisting the Stamford Police Department’s investigation of a Craig Court home, near the border of Pound Ridge, N.Y., where narcotics officers and SWAT team members discovered six homemade bombs, 16 firearms and hundreds of knives, axes, hatchets, black powder guns and sharpened sticks, police said.

“The weapons were all over the place,” Stamford police Capt. Richard Conklin said Friday. “It was a bizarre, bizarre type of thing. Black powder muzzle loaders, black powder pistols — even a crossbow. There were hundreds of these things all around.”

The discovery comes following a tip that Alexander Braverman, 24, was growing marijuana in the 3,400-square-foot home he shares with his parents, and that there were about a dozen guns — including an illegal assault weapon — inside the home, Conklin said.

It was not immediately known if Braverman was planning to use the weapons or explosives, Conklin said.

Braverman’s attorney, public defender Barry Butler, said he had not yet read the police reports and declined to comment on the case. Braverman was arraigned Friday at the Stamford courthouse, where Judge Auden Grogins ordered him held in lieu of $175,000 bond before transferring the case to the Part A docket, where the most serious cases are handled.

Conklin said officers found about six improvised explosive devices, including a live hand grenade, taped in containers, when they searched the home on Thursday night.

“They appeared to be ready to go,” he said.

The bomb squad secured the explosives before they were seized, and the grenade is being tested to determine if it’s real or a type of prop, Conklin said.

Charges regarding the explosives won’t be filed until an analysis is conducted.

A grow room was discovered in the basement, containing about a half-dozen marijuana plants, Conklin said. Some were mature with buds and others much younger, he said.

Police also found an illegal large-capacity magazine attached to a rifle that could hold as many as 16 bullets, Conklin said. Magazines in Connecticut cannot legally hold more than 10 bullets.

Conklin said one of the firearms, a .22 caliber pistol, had its serial numbers removed.

In addition to the pistol charge, Braverman was charged with possession of a high-capacity magazine, illegally altering pistol identification numbers, cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana with intent to sell and operating a drug factory.