WOODSTOCK – The man who dropped his loaded handgun at the Woodstock post office in February was a McHenry County associate judge, according to a police report obtained by the Northwest Herald.
In February, a customer at the U.S. post office on Country Club Road in Woodstock found a loaded 9mm gun on the floor. The gun didn’t have a bullet in the chamber, but did have a full magazine.
The police department later tracked down the owner, Thomas Meyer, who is a judge in the McHenry County Circuit Court.
Meyer had a valid FOID card and an Illinois concealed carry permit. He told police at the time that he had the gun in a zippered pocket of his jacket and it had fallen out without him noticing.
Federal law prohibits guns in a variety of places, including post offices, regardless of concealed carry permits. The post office in Woodstock didn’t have the required notice sticker on its door at the time, however, and Meyer wasn’t federally charged.
Local authorities didn't bring charges against the judge either.
“The post office is federal jurisdiction,” Woodstock Deputy Police Chief Jeffery Parsons said. “We reviewed the case with the state’s attorney, and there was really no Illinois statute that was violated at the time.”
Judges aren’t permitted to bring guns into the McHenry County Courthouse, court administrator Dan Wallis said.
Meyer declined to comment on the incident.
The Northwest Herald filed Freedom of Information Act requests last winter seeking police reports related to the incident, but the newspaper was only allowed to view a redacted report that did not include the name of the gun owner. Woodstock police cited a FOIA privacy exemption.
The newspaper appealed Woodstock’s refusal to provide the name to the Illinois Attorney General’s Office’s public access counselor, but the matter remained unresolved.