50 guns seized from Emery County man not allowed to own weapons, police say
by Pat Reavy ksl · KSL.comKEY TAKEAWAYS
- Thaddeus Curtis, 53, was arrested in Emery County for allegedly possessing nearly 50 firearms.
- Curtis was arrested for investigation of multiple charges, including drug and weapon possession.
- Police reported discovering firearms, meth and paraphernalia at his residence and vehicle.
CASTLE DALE — An Emery County man not allowed to possess guns because of a prior conviction and who allegedly told police he would not go back to jail was arrested Tuesday after police reported finding 50 weapons on his property.
Thaddeus Dale Curtis, 53, was booked into the Emery County Jail for investigation of 50 counts of being a restricted person in possession of a weapon, interfering with police, failing to stop for police, drug possession, marijuana possession, unlawful possession of a prescription drug, drug distribution, and two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia.
On March 16, Curtis was charged in 7th District Court with forgery, a third-degree felony. In that case, Curtis is accused of trying to bail out of jail by paying with money that "was a prop for motion pictures." He was also convicted in 2000 of automobile homicide, court records state, and was sentenced to one year in jail.
On Tuesday, an Emery County sheriff's deputy spotted Curtis walking outside his residence and stopped him because of his active warrant, a police booking affidavit states.
Curtis told the deputy he had paperwork that had his court date written on it and walked inside his residence to get the papers. The deputy followed.
"While inside the residence, Thaddeus made a phone call to his mother and talked to her about the court date and warrant. His mother had told him to do what we asked and he hung up the phone and said he was 'not going back up to the jail,'" according to the affidavit.
Curtis then went to an upstairs bedroom and locked himself inside. A second deputy was called to the scene, but neither could convince Curtis to come out.
"After giving Thaddeus numerous chances to come out of the room, the decision was made to make forced entry into the room. Once the door was opened and Thaddeus was placed into custody, I observed several firearms in plain view in the room," the arresting deputy wrote in the affidavit.
After learning that Curtis had a previous drug-related conviction and was not allowed to have guns, the deputies obtained a search warrant for the residence, an outbuilding and his vehicle.
"During the search of the residence, 48 firearms were located, other 3D-printed assault rifle lowers were located and 3D-printed pistol lowers. During the search we also located, a large quantity of a crystal like substance suspected to be methamphetamines, hypodermic needles containing suspected methamphetamine," and other paraphernalia, the affidavit alleges. "We also located several rounds of ammunition in the residence and inside the outbuilding."
Inside his vehicle, police found "an assault rifle lower and four loaded handgun magazines," according to the affidavit.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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Pat Reavy
Pat Reavy interned with KSL in 1989 and has been a full-time journalist for either KSL or Deseret News since 1991. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily the cops and courts beat.