Queens man busted with 70 guns, 50,000 bullets in his home

about 6 years in NY Daily

A humble, one-story brick house in Queens hid one of the largest stashes of guns and ammo the NYPD has ever found in one home, police said Monday.

Police arrested Ronald Drabman, 60, on Sunday, after cops found nearly 70 firearms and a staggering 50,000 bullets in his Bayside home on 208th St. near 58th Ave.

The NYPD believes Drabman was a collector, but cops are investigating whether he planned an attack with the weapons. Authorities do not initially think he was part of a criminal ring — but they are investigating leads.

A field intelligence officer in Brooklyn’s 81st Precinct first developed information about Drabman’s arsenal, NYPD Chief of Intelligence Thomas Galati said Monday. He wouldn’t go into specifics about how the officer gleaned the information.

When police came with a search warrant, they found the weapons cache in Drabman’s basement, authorities said. They said the stash included 23 handguns, 45 rifles, shotguns and assault rifles, a zip gun and two .177-caliber pellet guns.

“This is one person that possessed all of these weapons, and like I said, an unprecedented amount of ammunition,” Galati said.

“If you look at some of these weapons, there are high-power assault rifles, large magazines for them, plus a lot of handguns as well.”

Police also found a large amount of ammo when they executed a second search warrant on a commercial truck parked in Drabman’s driveway, police sources said.

Drabman — who once tried, unsuccessfully, to get a gun permit from the NYPD — was caught with a loaded revolver in Queens last September, sources said. He was involved in a car crash in Queens on Sept. 27 and tried to convince a responding EMT to hold his gun so the police wouldn’t find it, the sources said.

“I can’t have this on me,” he told the EMT, according to the criminal complaint, as he pulled the gun from his pants pocket and tried to hand it to the medic.

The EMT refused.

He also has a past arrest for petty larceny, sources said.

Drabman, who lives with his 94-year-old mother, was hit with more than 100 counts of criminal weapon possession, among other charges.

Police also found two bags of cocaine on the scene, sources said.

Drabman’s family has lived on the block for at least three decades, his neighbors told the Daily News on Monday.

His mom, who neighbors said is bedridden and receives care from a home health aide, got a Meals on Wheels delivery Monday, while the neighborhood was abuzz with talk of her son.

No one answered the door when a reporter knocked Monday afternoon.

Most of Drabman’s neighbors described him as standoffish and aloof.

One neighbor, a 21-year-old man who didn’t give his name, said he frequently smelled pot wafting from the house.

The police raid started Saturday night, and lasted into the morning Sunday.

“I knew he was a bad guy already,” the 21-year-old neighbor said. “He was a jerk.”

Drabman would often complain about his neighbor mowing the grass on his side of the property line, or making noise during barbecues, he said.

“I didn’t know he had all of those guns,” the neighbor said.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said Drabman had an “obsession with weapons.”

“The defendant is accused of using his home as a warehouse for illegal firearms — along with tens of thousands of rounds of live ammunition,” Brown said. “This stockpile of weapons poses a great risk to the residents of Queens. It is extremely disturbing to find such an arsenal of firearms in a residential community.”

The NYPD said all the seized guns had serial numbers, but that authorities had not yet traced them all to determine if any were stolen.

Drabman does not have a firearms license and is not a gun dealer, prosecutors said Monday.

He was awaiting arraignment at Queens Criminal Court. If convicted, he could face up to 26 years behind bars.

“It is the focus of the field intelligence program to develop intelligence, with recovering firearms as their number one priority,” Galati said.

“Last year, the field intelligence officer program seized over 1,285 guns. That contributed to the record low crime rate in New York City.”  With Rocco Parascandola, Andy Mai

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