North Andover Police Find Weapons Connected to Salem Robberies

Raymond Wallace, 33, may be behind bars but police have found more evidence to link him to armed robberies in the area.

Wallace was arrested last month at his home on Courageous Court at gunpoint in connection with an  and said there was a strong possibility Wallace also robbed a Peabody Borders in December.

After robbing PetSmart at gunpoint, Wallace allegedly fled in a stolen vehicle, ditched the car and set it on fire and got away in another vehicle.

North Andover Patch is reporting on April 6 at about 2 p.m., North Andover police received a call from two men who said they found a massive arsenal inside a set of speakers they got from a house in Salem.

A couple days before then, the men -- who work for a business hauling unwanted and discarded items from people's homes for them -- went to a home in Salem for a job. The woman there told them that she wanted them to take some furniture, including two large speakers, and dispose of them. The woman said the speakers did not work and that it was pointless to even try to plug them in.

"She said she wanted them (the speakers) destroyed,"North Andover Police Lieutenant Paul Gallagher said. "But they took them to their own apartment in North Andover."

The men wanted to fix the speakers. When they opened the speakers up, however, they found more than wires and screws. Inside the speakers was an arsenal of weapons including several guns and two inert hand grenades as well as ski masks, police uniforms and Halloween masks including President Barack Obama masks.

North Andover Police contacted the State Police Bomb Squad to make sure the grenades were intert (hollowed out and not functioning) and then locked the items in the evidence safe.

Salem Police said they searched Wallace's home after his arrest and found a sledge hammer, bolt cutters a a homemade concrete battering ram used to bash doors open. Wallace was out on parole for other armed robberies and is already a suspect in other area robberies as well.

The State Police Bomb Squad determined the weapons to not be a danger, the items were handed over to Salem Police for their ongoing investigation into the PetSmart case.

"This is part of Salem's case," Gallagher said. "There was no crime committed in North Andover."