New Kensington police accused a man of reaching for a stolen pistol in his vehicle when he was pulled over for running a stop sign.

Tory Windel Jones, 29, of the 1100 block of Hulton Road in Penn Hills was charged with a felony count of receiving stolen property along with counts of carrying a firearm without a license and two traffic citations in connection with the June 13 incident.

Jones was being detained in the Westmoreland County jail in lieu of a $25,000 cash bond to await a preliminary hearing before District Judge Frank J. Pallone Jr. on Aug. 3, according to court records.

A police officer wrote in Jones’ arrest papers that he was working a traffic enforcement detail about 12:30 a.m. along Constitution Boulevard when a Chevy Uplander minivan ran a stop sign at the Seventh Street intersection.

The officer approached the van from the passenger side and saw Jones looking out the driver’s side mirror while reaching behind the seat, according to a criminal complaint.

When the officer asked him what he was putting under his seat, Jones said he was searching for his insurance information.

Jones was ordered out of the vehicle and told to put his hands on the door so he could be searched for weapons, but he repeatedly tried to avoid the pat down by turning around and removing his hands from the door, police said.

A second officer who arrived on the scene found a 9 mm Taurus semiautomatic pistol that was loaded and ready to fire with a round in the chamber, police said.

The gun did not come back as stolen when the serial number was checked by a county police dispatcher, the complaint said. But a New Kensington police detective was able to identify the gun’s owner as a man from Wilkinsburg by using the eTrace system operated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

When police called the man, he told them the gun was stored in a lockbox in his bedroom and he was unaware that it was missing, the complaint said.

The man told police he rented a room in a home along Holmes Street and was living there with several unrelated people whom he did not know.

After learning from police that the gun was recovered during a traffic stop, the man filed a report with Wilkinsburg police that said he believed it was stolen from the house where he lives.

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