Police will hold the weapon to see if reports reveal it was involved in crimes in Holyoke or another community.
AK-47 rifle, similar to one police said a man found in a bag in his backyard Monday.HOLYOKE – Raul Robles was cleaning his car Monday when he saw something in his backyard on Allyn Street that scared him enough to call the police.
On the ground was a green canvas bag containing a Chinese-made AK-47 rifle, police said.
“When he opened it, he was surprised and scared at the same time, so he called the police,” said Marisa Robles, 33, who translated for her father, Raul Robles, who speaks little English.
“I think that somebody must have thrown it (into the yard),” she said.
The family has lived at 22 Allyn St., near Pleasant Street, since 1998. Nothing like finding a gun has ever happened before, she said.
Raul Robles, 63, said, through his daughter, “To find something like that, I don’t know who threw something like that in my yard, so I said, ‘I’m going to call the cops.’”
Lt. Michael J. Higgins said police will hold the rifle for a while to see if they get reports, such as if the weapon was involved in a crime here or in another community. It was unclear if the weapon was loaded, he said.
“No suspects, nobody saw the bag being thrown, just a recovered weapon,” Higgins said.
The AK-47 was designed by Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov and became the standard rifle for the Soviet Army in 1949. It remains the most widely used rifle in the world, though it is unavailable to the general public in the United States, according to the website ak-47.net