U.S. District Judge Audrey G. Fleissig sentenced a convicted felon to nearly six years (70 months) in prison for being caught with a silenced pistol. The sentencing occurred on Wednesday, following the October 2022 incident in St. Charles.
On October 13, 2022, the St. Charles Police Department responded to a report of a man in the 200 block of Blanche Drive. A witness reported seeing the man waving a firearm in a threatening manner in the backyard of a home. Police officers discovered Christopher Leach in the gated backyard. When the officer identified himself, Leach fled, discarding the gun in a bush. The officer used a Taser on Leach, who initially resisted arrest. The recovered firearm was a loaded .22-caliber semi-automatic pistol with a silencer attached.
Leach, a felon with prior convictions for stealing, drug possession, unlawful possession of an illegal weapon, and distribution of a controlled substance, was on parole at the time of his arrest. In April, he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Leach’s nearly six-year sentence will run consecutive to any sentence he receives for pending parole revocation matters in Phelps County Circuit Court.
The case was investigated by the St. Charles Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Christian Goeke prosecuted the case.
