In the 43 years Marco Corona has worked at The LeMont on Mt. Washington, he’s seen patrons leave their fair share of belongings behind at the high-end restaurant — clothing items, sometimes a credit card.
But never anything big, and especially nothing potentially dangerous, the general manager said.
Until Nov. 11, when LeMont staff members were cleaning up after a wedding reception and discovered a gun underneath a table in the main dining room.
“No one has ever done something like this before,” Mr. Corona said.
None of the staff working that night saw the gun earlier that evening, he said. They were baffled about who it belonged to, and how it ended up under a table.
“It could have been involved in a crime,” Mr. Corona said. “We didn’t know how to handle it.”
As far as he knew, the gun was not loaded. “But we’re not the experts,” he added.
Mr. Corona kept the weapon in his locked office, waiting for someone to claim it. But after 13 days, no one did. So, on Nov. 24th, he called the police, who retrieved the weapon from the Grandview Avenue restaurant later that day.
Police traced the weapon back to an owner in Penn Hills, whose license to carry a concealed firearm had expired. The owner was notified, and the gun was sent to the County Crime lab, said Pittsburgh Public Safety spokeswoman Cara Cruz.
When Pittsburgh police were notified of the discarded weapon, so were Pittsburgh’s social media users. The popular X (formerly Twitter) account @pgh_scanner overheard the call and posted it online, where it’s been viewed over 74,000 times. Some users questioned why the weapon was not in a holster; others called it “irresponsible.”
Mt Washington. 1114 Grandview Ave - LeMont Restaurant. If you left your gun they had to turn it into the police.
— Pittsburgh Scanner (@pgh_scanner) November 24, 2023
“Yeah, how does this happen? Pocket carry gone wrong? This guy makes us look bad,” wrote one user.
In America, approximately 380,000 guns go missing or are stolen each year, and nearly 40% go unreported to police, according to the gun violence prevention group Giffords Law Center.
As for the gun found at the LeMont, Mr. Corona stands by reporting the weapon, and said that safety of the staff and patrons at LeMont is a priority.
“We’re always vigilant,” he said.
First Published: November 28, 2023, 10:43 p.m.
Updated: November 29, 2023, 10:42 a.m.
