Magnet fishermen recover stolen gun from lake, woman arrested in Louisiana

A social-media clip showing a woman apparently tossing evidence from a bridge into Cross Lake ended with Bryce Nachtwey and his Outdoors Weekly crew hauling up a stolen firearm and handing Shreveport Police a live case. Nachtwey said the team drove 11 hours from Florida to Louisiana, then used an extra-large Battle Magnet on September 3, 2025, while officers watched the recovery unfold.

Shreveport Police said the gun had been stolen from Fort Worth, Texas. Two days later, on Friday, September 5, 2025, police arrested Alexis Mullone. She was charged with illegal possession of a stolen firearm and child desertion after investigators said she left her one-year-old child alone in a car outside the police station. The child was later placed with family.

For magnet fishers, the Cross Lake recovery is the kind of moment that changes the whole day in a hurry. The rule is simple: when a magnet brings up a gun, stop pulling and stop handling it like a normal find. Keep people back, leave the weapon alone, and get law enforcement involved right away. Magnet fishing is built around yanking ferromagnetic junk from the water, but a firearm is no scrap pull. It turns into evidence the second it breaks the surface, and legal restrictions can vary by location.

Nachtwey said his team finds firearms regularly while magnet fishing across the United States, and that is part of the bigger pattern. In April 2024, a citizen magnet fishing in Horse Creek in Telfair County, Georgia, recovered a .22-caliber rifle. Two days later, the same person found a bag containing driver’s licenses, credit cards, and a cellphone tied to Bud and June Runion, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation called it new evidence in the 2015 double homicide case. In March 2026, Nate DeMontigny of the Cape Cod Magnet Crew found a pristine derringer pistol in a river in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and Bridgewater police put the weapon under investigation.

Cross Lake showed how fast a routine drop can become a police matter. One magnet hit, one gun on the line, and the whole job shifted from a hobby haul to a piece of active evidence.