Man who stole ammo from Camp Shelby left prison for a halfway house. He's in trouble again.
A man who stole military ammo that set off an explosion with injuries in Gulfport had a second chance to start over on probation.
After being sent back to prison for missing drug testing appointments and being caught in Minnesota, David Eugene Banks spent a year in prison and apparently decided he didn’t like being at a halfway house for six months of his two-year probation. He disappeared, and was found by Biloxi Police, who turned him over to federal marshals for a hearing to revoke his probation again, according to federal court documents.
The 54-year-old Bangs, of Harrison County, is one of four men who admitted stealing anti-tank rounds from a dangerous firing range at Camp Shelby, about an hour north of Gulfport, in 2012.
They each went to prison for their roles in the thefts for a money-making venture with scrap metal. A resulting explosion on Jan. 19, 2012, seriously injured a man who was using an acetylene torch on one of the dangerous explosive devices.
After serving 63 months in prison, Bangs began a three-year probation period. But a federal judge sent him back to prison for a year in July 2017 with an order for two years of probation. Bangs had failed to show up for drug test appointments that April and May and federal probation officers reported they were unable to find him, records show.
He turned up in Minnesota, where a federal magistrate in St. Paul sent him back to Gulfport.
Bang’s probation was revoked a year ago — July 17, 2017 — and a judge ordered prison followed by probation.
He was sent to Dismas Charities Community Correction Facility, a faith-based community re-entry program that allows offenders to work, volunteer and pay fines or restitution. Dismas has locations in 13 states, including in Tupelo.
Bangs disappeared from the halfway house May 25. Court papers don’t say if it was the one in Tupelo.
Biloxi Police found him Tuesday and turned him over to federal marshals, who took him before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert H. Walker on Wednesday for an initial hearing to revoke his probation.
Marshals will bring Bangs back to court July 26 for a final hearing before District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. A final hearing on an order to revoke probation is a formality — it’s when a judge rules on what happens next, typically more prison time and probation.
The explosives case made headlines nationwide.
Here’s what happened
Bangs and his co-defendants had been stealing military-style munitions from Camp Shelby and stripping them for scrap metal around a camper and a shed on a man’s property. The property owner, by all accounts, didn’t know illegal, dangerous activity was going on around his land on Saucier Lane, a dead-end road off Beulah Church Road.
Dale Lee Johnson, related by marriage to the property owner, was seriously injured Jan. 19, 2012, while using an acetylene torch on an anti-tank round. It exploded, causing serious burns to his face, chest and hands. It left him crippled and partially blind. He would not be prosecuted.
It was “a very volatile situation,” Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent Joel Lee testified.
“It was an extremely dangerous situation that could have caused significant damages and loss of life.”
Johnson’s brother, Jimmy Lee Wilson, later admitted he had cut a large hole in barbed-wire fence at Camp Shelby so he and others could drive a pickup truck onto the firing range to collect remnants of ammo left on the ground. Wilson told the court he had been scavenging at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, an hour’s drive north of Gulfport, with his father for at least 20 years.
ATF agents and the Biloxi bomb squad found 51 complete or partial anti-tank rounds after the explosion. An Army group was brought in to detonate the munitions, described as 84mm AT4s, overnight. An AT4 is an unguided, anti-armor weapon said to be effective in assaults against tanks, armored vehicles, combat vehicles and aircraft. It can be carried by one person and doesn’t require an expert shooter.
The anti-tank rounds were among munitions that have been left at a Camp Shelby firing range since the 1920s, court testimony showed. The firing range is said to be so dangerous that targets are dropped by helicopter onto the firing range.
What happened next
The area around Saucier Lane was evacuated. An Army crew’s explosions to detonate remaining weapons left a 4-foot by 7-foot hole in the ground, blew off part of a shed and caused a minor head injury to the property owner’s grandson.
The property owner’s dog, Buckshot, also was injured, believed struck by shrapnel.
Bangs went to prison for unlawful transportation and shipment of explosive materials and faced 10 years in prison. A judge fined him $7,500.
Jimmy Wilson received an 8-year prison term.
Another brother, Jack Bernell “Nobby” Wilson, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years.
Lance Looney sold a batch of the “cut and cleaned” munitions to an Alabama recycling company for $3,000 and split the money with his friends, the investigation showed.
Looney, who had driven Johnson to a fire station after the explosion to seek medical help, received a 7-year sentence.
The Wilson brothers’ sister, Lucy Rebecca Saucier, also was indicted but died of natural causes before her case was resolved.
At one of the sentencing hearings, Judge Guirola called the men’s business venture a “foolish” and “ill-advised enterprise.”
Though the men pleaded to different charges, “they all did the same thing,” Guirola said.