Photos by Shaozhuo Cui | The Roanoke Times

Owner John Billos runs a sub shop and pizzeria and served as a SWAT team member in Washington, D.C.

From left, Sgt. Tommy Gautier, who is not related to the suspect, Sheriff Morgan Millirons and Lt. Ron Hamlin examine the gun that was taken from a Giles County workshop.

With .50-caliber weapons like this Browning M2, shooters can hit targets as small as 4 inches across from 1,000 yards in precision shooting competitions.

PEARISBURG -- No one was supposed to know John Billos had a Browning M2 .50-caliber semi-automatic stored in his workshop, so when the 85-pound, $9,000 weapon and 11 boxes of its bullets went missing, he panicked.

But after more than three months of worrying and searching, the Giles County Sheriff's Office recovered the gun June 5 in Princeton, W.Va.

They have warrants charging a Narrows man with stealing it. Now they have to find him.

Investigators say they think Anthony Dewayne Gautier, 32, just happened across the gun as he rummaged through Billos' private storage building and workshop near Narrows on Feb. 25.

"We think he just went looking for stuff," Giles County Lt. Ron Hamlin said.

He said the sheriff's office has warrants charging Gautier with breaking and entering, grand larceny and grand larceny of a firearm. Investigators say they think Gautier has left the county.

Billos, who uses the gun in precision target shooting, said it appeared someone entered his building through a window.

The thief may have taken the gun, but he wouldn't have been able to fire it, Billos said.

The gun's tripod was left behind, and the bullets can't be fired without a complete cartridge: bullet, brass casing, primer and powder.

Billos said he thinks the thief probably saw the copper-colored tips on the bullets and thought they were copper, which could sell for a big price. However, he said, the bullets are steel with a copper skin.

"I don't believe he really knew what he had," Hamlin said.

Still, he said, the missing gun -- sometimes called a "tank killer" because its rounds can pierce armor -- worried him.

"We didn't want it to get into the wrong hands," he said. "We knew we had to get that gun back."

Hamlin said investigators tracked down the person they believed to have the gun in Princeton.

"To our surprise, when we talked to this individual he said, 'Yeah, I have it downstairs,' " Hamlin said.

Gautier allegedly tried to trade the gun for a vehicle, Hamlin said. The person he tried to trade with didn't have a vehicle, though, so Gautier asked him to hold onto the gun for him, Hamlin said.

Asked how he felt when he heard the gun had been found, Billos rattled off a string of words: "Ecstatic, elated, total shock and disbelief."

He said he became frustrated with the investigation at times, worried that it had stalled. But he gave kudos to the sheriff's office and the West Virginia State Police for getting it back.

"These guys did a good job," he said.

Billos said he has had the gun about three years, though it's not his first .50-caliber. He has kept the guns for years without incident.

Now the owner of Papa's Pizzeria and Subs in Pearisburg, Billos served as a police officer and SWAT team member in Washington, D.C., from 1960 to 1970. He is an 18-year member of the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association, an organization that promotes sporting and precision use of .50-caliber rounds.

The group stages competitions around the country, including one last weekend at the Quantico Marine Base.

At the events, participants shoot at targets as small as 4 inches across from 1,000 yards away.

"A thousand yards is a target you can't see with the naked eye," Billos said. "This is precision shooting."

He reloads his spent cartridges, meaning he takes the cases that expanded as they were fired and runs them through a resizing die. He then puts new primer and powder in them.

With the high cost of ammunition, he said, "that's the only economical way to do it."

Reloading can be done for a quarter of the cost of purchasing new cartridges, he said.

Billos said he's eager to get his Browning back.

It now sits locked up in the sheriff's office, where it takes two men to pick it up.

It will be returned to Billos, who said he plans to keep it in a locked safe from now on.