COLUMBIA, S.C. — A Columbia man will spend nearly five years in prison on federal charges tied to the theft of multiple guns from a Garners Ferry Road store.
According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina, 34-year-old Christopher Cunningham will spend 57 months in federal prison for an incident that occurred just over a year ago on March 6, 2022.
According to the statement, evidence showed that Cunningham and another suspect broke into a retail store on Garners Ferry Road around 1:30 a.m. and stole two shotguns and two rifles by forcing open a display case in the sporting goods section.
The statement said that Columbia Police responded and, with the help of surveillance video and fingerprints on the display case, determined that Cunningham was a suspect.
The U.S. Attorney's Office said that Cunningham had prior convictions for burglary, grand larceny, malicious injury to personal property, and multiple shoplifting cases.
And while the latest statement doesn't specifically name a store, the Columbia Police Department alleged that Cunningham stole several items from the Walmart Supercenter on Garners Ferry Road between September 2021 and February 2022.
The police department said in the 2022 media release that Cunningham had stolen four guns from the Walmart store on the same date announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office. At that time, two of the four guns were recovered.
Police said at the time that Cunningham also showed a knife to a store employee who had confronted him during one of the incidents and allegedly assaulted another at one point.
Those incidents were not mentioned in the latest announcement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.
As Cunningham will be in the federal prison system, there will be no parole. After spending nearly five years in prison, he also faces three years of court-ordered supervision.
The case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Columbia Police Department. It was prosecuted as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lamar J. Fyall.
