A Kansas woman was charged Friday with giving guns to the felon who shot up a Kansas plant, federal prosecutors said.
Sarah Hopkins, 28, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of transferring the Zastava AK-47-style semi-automatic rifle and a Glock .40-caliber handgun to ex-boyfriend Cedric Ford, 38. She is charged with one count of transfer of a weapon to a convicted felon.
Prosecutors said Hopkins knew Ford was a convicted felon and was not allowed to have the firearms. The ATF said Hopkins told investigators she had been in a relationship with Ford but moved out in July 2015.
Hopkins is not the woman who sought a protection from abuse order in February, which was served to Ford at work about 90 minutes before the first shooting began, authorities said.
Court records show that Ford was a felon who previously lived in Miami and was on probation with a series of convictions in Florida, including burglary in 2000.
He had a criminal record stretching back to October 1996, when he was charged with carrying a concealed firearm when he was 18 years old, the records showed.
Ford killed three and wounded 14 others in a rampage Thursday that started after he was served with a restraining order at his workplace, lawn-care equipment manufacturer Excel Industries in Hesston.
He was shot dead by police.
Hopkins told an ATF agent on Friday that she took the guns from the Newton home they once shared in August of 2015, but returned them to Ford after he threatened her, according to a criminal complaint. An employee of a pawn shop said Hopkins bought the guns in March 2014 and later pawned them, the agent wrote in the affidavit. On Feb. 5, Hopkins allegedly got the AK-47-type rifle out of pawn on Feb. 5. It is unclear from the affidavit when the Glock was taken out of pawn. This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com.
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