Upper Milford Gun-Shop Owner, Two Others Arrested in New Jersey With Weapons Cache
The proprietor of a gun range in Upper Milford along with two other Pennsylvania residents are being held in Hudson County, N.J. jail on a variety of charges related to illegal possession of guns and ammunition.
John F. Cramsey, 50, of Upper Milford, Dean S. Smith, 53, of Whitehall, and Kimberly Arendt, 29, of Lehighton, were arrested at 7:40 a.m. Tuesday at the Holland Tunnel, New Jersey Toll Plaza after Port Authority Police stopped their vehicle due to a cracked windshield, according to Joe Pentangelo, a senior police public information officer with the New Jersey Port Authority.
"Astute Port Authority Police work led to the stoppage of a vehicle on the New Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel," the spokesperson wrote in an email.
A subsequent search of the vehicle turned up multiple rifles and handguns, some of which were loaded, according to Pentangelo.
In the same message, he wrote that the weapons included five pistols, an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, as well as less than 50-grams of marijuana and a marijuana pipe.
"At this time, the investigation is continuing, but the agency does not believe the incident is terrorism-related," the officer wrote in the same message.
Cramsey, Smith, and Arendt were turned over to law enforcement officials in Hudson County, where they will face charges, according to Pentangelo.
An email message requesting information from Gene Rubino, the acting chief of investigations and the executive assistant prosecutor for Hudson County, was not returned.
Cramsey, the owner of Higher Ground Tactical LLC, located at 5402 Chestnut Street in Upper Milford, and the other two people were headed to Brooklyn NY on Tuesday morning to "extract a 16-year-old Wilkes Barre girl from a hotel," according to his Facebook post on the Enough is Enough public discussion page. The same post, made at 7:13 a.m. on the Enough is Enough page Tuesday, states that the girl "woke last night to find her friend's [sic] body next to her in the same bed where her friend died of another heroin overdose."
In the post, Cramsey references a popular Beastie Boys song: "NO ....SLEEP ....TILL BROOKLYN ! ENOUGH is ENOUGH! Coming to a Town near YOU SOON !"
Cramsey invited Smith to "tag along with his camera" during the extraction, according to a Facebook post on Smith's page at 3:47 a.m. that morning.
Tuesday marked the four-month anniversary of the death of Cramsey's 20-year-old daughter Alexandria, a professional model and a ballet dancer, from a heroin overdone, according to a post on his Facebook page.
"For as much as it's [sic] worth .... I have been fighting the Demon that stole you from me with everything I got ....," he wrote in a 1:08 a.m. post. "Please give me the Strength to continue taking this fight to the Evil Darkness that has not just taken my Sunshine away leaving me in eternal darkness, but all the other families like yours that cry everyday as a part of our daily lives."
On Wednesday afternoon, in Hudson County Courthouse in Jersey City, the trio was arraigned by video on the charges. The three pleaded not guilty, according to an Associated Press report.
Sheila Venable, the presiding criminal judge in the Hudson County Superior Court of New Jersey, set the bail for each defendant at $75,000 cash, according to Raymond Worrall, the media relations officer for the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office. Worrall did not know when the next hearing in the case will be scheduled.