Trio charged in armed home break

LYNN – Police charged three men with felony breaking and entering of a Lynn apartment and unlawful possession of a firearm Wednesday after a gun was found in the bedroom the men broke into, which belonged to a confessed drug dealer who insisted the gun wasn?t his, an assistant district attorney said Thursday.Lynn Police arrested Valmir Lindor, 24, of Quincy, Nequiest Williams, 26, of Dorchester and Brandon Donovan Ramsay, 25, of Lynn Wednesday afternoon and charged them with breaking and entering in the daytime for felony and possessing a burglarious instrument (pry bar). They were all later charged with using a firearm during a felony and possessing a firearm without a license.Police responded to 62 Tudor St. around 12:45 p.m. Wednesday after an unidentified caller reported seeing three “Hispanic males” breaking into the side door of a home with what appeared to be a screwdriver, according to an arrest report.Officers found the door to a front basement apartment pried open. Inside the apartment they found three men identified as the defendants inside a bedroom. According to the report, Ramsay told police they knew the owner of the house, but didn?t know his last name.A Lynn Police sergeant found a pry bar on the floor of the bedroom, along with a backpack, a small safe and a Sony Playstation 3 that were sitting on a chair, according to the report.Chris Mullins, 20, who lives in the apartment with his mother, arrived and told police the safe should have been in his closet and the Playstation should have been connected to his television. He said he did not recognize any of the three men.Officers then searched Williams and found a scale that was disguised to look like a CD player in his pocket, along with a small amount of marijuana.Williams told officers the scale belonged to Mullins, and that he had a bunch of “weed” in his bedroom, which was why they had come to the home. When officers approached Mullins with the scale, he told them, “Yea, it?s mine, I?m not gonna lie,” according to the report.During a search of Mullins? room, officers found a loaded semi-automatic .380 handgun under the seat of the chair where the safe and Playstation had originally been found, which Mullins insisted was not his, according to the report. Police believed Mullins, who offered to be fingerprinted to prove he didn?t touch the firearm, and noted in the report that “the gun was found in close proximity to where (the three defendants) were found when officers arrived on scene.”During the arraignment for the three men Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Mark Byron requested that Williams be held on $25,000 bail and that the other two men be held on $20,000 bail due to “the serious nature of the circumstances.”Byron said each man had a criminal history that included assaults, unarmed robberies and possessing guns without a permit.But Lynn District Court Judge Stacey Fortes-White ordered Williams held on $7,500 cash bail due to his past history of carrying a firearm without a license. She ordered Lindor held on $5,000 cash bail. Ramsay, who was referred to in court as “Dixon,” was taken into custody pending a probation violation hearing.Attorneys for the three men argued that Mullins was a confessed drug dealer and it would make sense that he had a gun in his home, arguing that prosecutors could not prove the men hadn?t been invited into the home.?What we have in the police report is three men found in a room where somebody said they didn?t belong,” defense attorney Alicia Andrews said. “(Mullins) is the guy police made a choice to believe.”Mullins also told police he sells marijuana “to make extra money” and that he “had not made arrangements to replenish his supply so that is why he only had a few grams left,” according to the arrest report. He said he had $2,260 in the safe from selling marijuana, the report said, and added that “a pound of marijuana goes for about $4,000, but he buys half-a-pound at a time.”Lynn Police summonsed Mullins to court