A report of a shirtless man with a gun in a Grace Chapel parking lot sent Lexington police racing to lock down the church campus Friday afternoon, only for officers to discover the supposed weapon was a musket-era powder horn being polished by a man waiting to pick up his wife from work.
The Lexington Police Department Dispatch Center received the report at approximately 3:20 p.m. Friday, according to a statement from the department shared in a Lexington Police Department Facebook post. The call described a shirtless male carrying a gun in the parking lot of Grace Chapel, located at 59 Worthen Road. Responding officers quickly established a perimeter and placed the building on lockdown, a building that, at the time, was populated with numerous programs, including those involving children.
Officers conducted a systematic search of the campus before locating the man a short time later. An on-scene investigation determined he had been waiting to pick up his wife, who works at Grace Chapel, and that due to the heat he had stepped outside his vehicle to polish a powder horn, a musket-era container shaped like a bull’s horn traditionally used to store gunpowder. Police say the man is an avid period reenactor, and that security video corroborated his account of events.
Multiple Cruisers, Closed Roads During the Search
The response required a significant show of force, with multiple cruisers converging on the scene and police closing both the Grace Chapel parking lot and parts of Worthen Road during the investigation, per the department’s statement. The Lexington Police Department headquarters sits less than a mile away at 1625 Massachusetts Avenue, which allowed for a rapid multi-cruiser response once the report came in, according to a Town of Lexington press release…