MARTINEZ — A man who took thousands of gun parts, accessories and bullets from a Contra Costa Sheriff’s gun range while volunteering for the agency has been convicted of three gun charges in a plea deal.
John Michael King pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor counts and one felony charge, related to possession of an assault weapon and gun parts. He was sentenced to 90 days of house arrest, a two-year probation term and ordered by the court not to possess firearms, which his felony conviction also bars, court records show.
The case filed in 2022 was litigated for two-and-a-half years until prosecutors and defense attorneys finalized a resolution last December. The outcome has not been previously reported.
King’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment. Asked for a comment, a Contra Costa District Attorney’s spokesman simply recited the terms of the plea deal.
King, a volunteer with the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Office, was allowed to take thousands of gun parts and ammunition from the sheriff’s gun range on Marsh Creek Road in unincorporated Clayton for “well over a decade,” according to a retired lieutenant’s testimony. The practice was changed after an internal probe, which also found no criminality and produced no written findings, according to the testimony.
The items had been marked for destruction, and included bullets and gun parts that had been seized during criminal investigations and ostensibly taken off the streets, court records show.
But when the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office learned what had happened, it sent a squad of investigators to King’s ex-wife’s home, where a mother lode of live bullets, gun parts, holsters and other accessories still remained in the garage. His ex-wife had sent numerous letters to sheriff’s employees, including Sheriff David Livingston, expressing concern that the bullets posed a possible safety hazard.
The lieutenant who investigated the matter for the sheriff’s internal affairs department testified in 2020 that he looked around the garage where King’s guns were stashed and didn’t see anything “overtly illegal.”
But allegedly illegal assault weapons, as well as the suspected ghost gun, were found by DA inspectors who searched the same garage two years later, court records show.
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