Children find pistol in sand of Hilton Head Island beach, police say
Police collected a wet, sandy pistol after two children found it on a beach on south-end Hilton Head Island late last week. The gun was determined to have been lost, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.
Beaufort County deputies responded Friday around 2 p.m. to Alder Lane Beach Park, located in the Forest Beach area. A beach patrol employee had already placed the firearm in a plastic bag, which police secured inside a patrol vehicle, according to a sheriff’s office incident report.
When a deputy asked the two children who located the pistol “where exactly they had found it,” they led him toward the shoreline just north of Beach Marker 52, the report says. The deputy took note of the location’s coordinates, adding in his report that the call came in just after high tide.
A search of the Glock 45’s serial number revealed it to be a “lost firearm” from a previous sheriff’s office case, the report says. The firearm was “in the beginning stages of rust in some areas,” a deputy wrote in the police report, noting that the gun was unloaded and its magazine empty.
Police brought the found firearm to the sheriff’s office Hilton Head substation, the report says, where a deputy planned to break down the gun and “rinse out the sand” to prevent further rusting while it was in evidence. Before then, the Glock was reportedly swabbed for DNA.
Sheriff’s office spokesperson Master Sgt. Robert Herlong said Wednesday morning the firearm had not yet been returned to its registered owner and remained in the department’s evidence division.
