Nazi Memorabilia, 'Arsenal' Of Firearms Found In California Home, Man Arrested

A man was arrested after detectives found Nazi memorabilia and an “arsenal” of more than fifty firearms at his home in California on Tuesday. The firearms included assault rifles and snipers.

Fifty-one-year-old Mitchell Todd, the owner of an Orange County dove releasing business, was taken into custody after serving a search warrant Tuesday.

The Laguna Beach Police Department (LBPD) had been following the man since early this month after he allegedly began threatening a man with whom he had a business dispute. There was a payment issue after Todd was asked to release doves at the man’s son’s funeral.

“The suspect had made a verbal threat stating words to the effect of maybe you need to go be with your son. You could tell the voicemails and text messages became more and more threatening and then the tip of the iceberg was hearing the releasing of a handgun slide, so at that point we knew we were dealing with somebody whose got the potential of extreme violence,” said Sgt. Jim Cota of LBPD told Fox 11.

The officials obtained a search warrant and took him into custody Tuesday. A stockpile of weapons and ammunition were found when they searched his home.

“Definitely an arsenal, we’re trying to figure out why one person would have in excess of 50 guns, at least in my career it’s stands up there with the top 5 in terms of firepower. This is definitely an amount of weaponry that is not for personal use,” Sgt. Cota said, adding officials also found a Confederate flag and Nazi memorabilia in the house.

“We also found some memorabilia that was a reference to the Third Reich and Nazi paraphernalia that were gonna look into just to see if there’s any ties to any hate groups or anything like that,” he added.

Neighbors revealed the Nazi memorabilia was seen several times on Todd’s window and that he had a reputation of being a “crazy guy.”

Sgt. Cota said only 12 weapons were registered to Todd. The Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will jointly investigate the incident. Sgt. Cota said he was proud of his detectives who prevented something major from happening.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the detectives and the work that they did tonight, my gut feeling tells me we did potentially stop something that could’ve been, I can’t even put into words what could’ve been forthcoming,” he added.

Todd was charged with criminal threats and was placed in Laguna Beach jail. Weapons charge could be slapped on him later. Todd will be moved to Santa Ana jail Wednesday.