Fake Military Documents, Weapons Found in Abandoned Pickup

SUV found crashed behind Hurst business

A dry cleaner and former member of the U.S. military has been arrested after suspicious documents and weapons were found in his crashed pickup truck early Tuesday.

At about 5 a.m. Tuesday, a delivery driver spotted a crashed Chevrolet Silverado behind the Mayflower Place shopping center along state Highway 26 near Precinct Line.  The driver notified the Hurst Police Department, who soon arrived to investigate.

According to police, the vehicle was wrecked with front end damage, had its airbags deployed and, upon further inspection by officers, was found to contain what appeared to be military documents and two civilian weapons. Additionally, Hurst police said the truck has a military insignia sticker on the windshield and similar markings on some of the documents.

Given the nature of the contents found, police requested the assistance of the bomb squad as well as the FBI, ATF and NCIS.  Businesses in the shopping center were closed for a short time during the investigation, but reopened at about 11 a.m. after the bomb squad was cleared.

Investigators later determined that the documents found in the truck were fake federal documents used to create false identifcation cards, not specifically military documents or identification cards.

The owner of the truck, 29-year-old Azeez Ahmed Alghaziani, is a former member of the U.S. military, an American citizen, and the owner of a dry cleaning business in the shopping center. Investigators found the man inside his business, totally unaware of the investigation that had been ongoing outside. 

Officials said he was cooperating with investigators before he was placed under arrest by the Hurst Police Department on a charge of document tampering.  According to police, Ahmed had been living at the business for several days.

One of the federal agencies involved in the investigation told Richard Winstanley, the assistant chief of the Hurst Police Department, that the man had been a "person of interest" at one time in an investigation, but was cleared of any wrongdoing.  Officials did not elaborate on the nature of the previous investigation.

So far there is no word on what caused the crash.

NBC 5's Ben Russell & Ken Kalthoff contributed to this report.

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