News-Democrat
A St. Louis woman is in custody after bailiffs at the St. Clair County Building found a gun in her purse, police said.
Genesis D. Mitchell, 34, of 9853 Rivermont Drive, St. Louis, was headed to a child-support courtroom on the third floor of the courthouse when she was asked to empty her pockets and hand her purse over to a bailiff before walking through a metal detector.
Genesis D. Mitchell
Mitchell set off the detector when she walked through it and as St. Clair County Bailiff Dwayne Sargent opened Mitchell's purse to search it, Mitchell told him she had a license to carry a concealed weapon in Missouri and had a loaded gun in her purse, according to the police report.
Sargent found a cocked and loaded Beretta .25 caliber automatic handgun in Mitchell's purse. Mitchell was told that although she could carry a concealed weapon in Missouri, she was not permitted to carry the same concealed weapon in Illinois and was placed under arrest.
"Although this person had a concealed carry permit in Missouri it gives no authority to carry a firearm in Illinois. But even in Missouri they are not allowed to carry loaded semi-automatic pistols into a courthouse," said St. Clair County Sheriff's Capt. Steve Johnson, chief investigator with the Sheriff's Department. "We do not have any information that anything violent was planned but in a courthouse setting we cannot take a chance. Thanks to the hard work the bailiffs do every day, this semi-automatic pistol was prevented from going into a child-support court room."
Mitchell was charged with the unlawful use of a weapon and remains in custody at the St. Clair County Jail in lieu of $25,000 bail.
