A Reading man was jailed after police said he tried to buy a French bulldog with counterfeit money and pulled a gun when the seller confronted him.<\/p>\n
City police said the victim told officers he met 23-year-old Joshua Gomez, whom he knew from a previous workplace, around 10 p.m. Friday at 10th and Cotton streets to sell him a French bulldog for $1,000 \u2014 the price they had agreed on through Facebook messages.<\/p>\n
According to court records:<\/p>\n
The victim said he handed the dog to Gomez, who in turn handed him a stack of assorted bills. That\u2019s when the deal went bad.<\/p>\n
The victim quickly realized the bills were fake and confronted Gomez. Gomez then pulled out a black pistol with an extended magazine, keeping the barrel pointed toward the ground but causing the victim to fear for his life. Gomez then fled the scene with the dog.<\/p>\n
The victim immediately called police, saying he had been robbed by someone he knew. Officers located Gomez at his residence in the 1000 block of Culvert Street.<\/p>\n
Gomez admitted to acquiring the dog but claimed it had run away. Police found the French bulldog in a nearby yard and returned it to the victim.<\/p>\n
Gomez was taken into custody, and officers seized a 9mm pistol with an extended magazine from his pocket. Police later obtained a search warrant for his home.<\/p>\n
In an upstairs bedroom, investigators found a 9mm Glock pistol equipped with an auto sear \u2014 a device that converts a semi-automatic firearm into a fully automatic weapon \u2014 along with a fully loaded extended magazine. They also recovered a loaded .22-caliber pistol that was confirmed as stolen.<\/p>\n
Gomez was charged with robbery, theft by unlawful taking, receiving stolen property, making terroristic threats, carrying a firearm without a license, and criminal use of a communication facility.<\/p>\n
He was committed to Berks County Jail in lieu of $85,000 bail following arraignment before District Judge Brian K. Strand in Reading Central Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Reading man was jailed after police said he tried to buy a French bulldog with counterfeit money…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,202,857,182,139,28,736,128,130,129,706],"class_list":{"0":"post-1013","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","10":"tag-essential-reading","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-reading","15":"tag-reading-city","16":"tag-reading-city-headlines","17":"tag-reading-city-news","18":"tag-top-stories-reg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}