NEWS RELEASE

OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY

WESTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI

MATT J. WHITWORTH

Contact Don Ledford, Public Affairs ● (816) 426-4220 ● 400 East Ninth Street, Room 5510 ● Kansas City, MO 64106

www.usdoj.gov/usao/mow/index.html

JUNE 17, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PROJECT CEASEFIRE

INDEPENDENCE MAN SENTENCED TO 15 YEARS

AFTER STEALING AGENT’S FIREARM

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Matt J. Whitworth, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that an Independence, Mo., man was sentenced in federal court today for illegally possessing a firearm after breaking into a police officer’s vehicle and stealing a federal agent’s handgun.

Daryl E. Diemer, 42, of Independence, was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan this morning to 15 years in federal prison without parole. Diemer was sentenced as a career criminal due to his prior violent felony convictions.

On March 10, 2009, Diemer pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. Diemer admitted that he broke into an undercover detective’s police vehicle shortly after noon on Oct. 10, 2008. Diemer broke out the rear driver’s side window of the vehicle and took numerous items of police equipment, including a ballistic vest and badges. Diemer also took an ATF agent’s duty firearm, a Sig Sauer .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, that was inside the vehicle.

Crime scene technicians recovered a latent fingerprint from the outer driver’s side of the vehicle, which a fingerprint examiner matched to Diemer. Police officers searched the wooded area behind Diemer’s house and recovered the pistol and some of the police equipment stolen from the police vehicle.

Under federal law, it is illegal for anyone who has been convicted of a felony to be in possession of any firearm or ammunition. Diemer has a dozen prior felony convictions, including convictions for second-degree robbery, burglary, second-degree burglary, attempted aggravated burglary, forgery, receiving stolen property and tampering.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jess E. Michaelsen. It was investigated by the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Project Ceasefire

Project Ceasefire, launched in October 1999, is a cooperative initiative by federal and local law enforcement and the Kansas City Crime Commission that targets for federal prosecution persons who unlawfully use or possess firearms.

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