Neighbors in Disbelief as Police Seize 42 Weapons From Mansion

The security gate and television camera aren’t signs of welcome, but neighbors say that the family is friendly, the type of people who send cookies at Christmas and wish-you-were-here postcards on Hawaiian vacations.

So there was some shock in Hancock Park on Wednesday after neighbors learned that Los Angeles police searching Madia Buenaflor’s white Mediterranean-style estate had confiscated 42 weapons, including 12 fully automatic assault rifles.

Police detectives said they found weapons in several rooms of the two-story, 4,200-square-foot mansion. In addition to 12 assault rifles--including three Uzis--police said they seized 18 handguns, six shotguns and six machine pistols. They also confiscated silencers, laser gun scopes, body armor and “a lot of ammunition,” police detectives said.

Two of Buenaflor’s sons were among four people booked on suspicion of conspiracy to sell machine guns. Berendo Buenaflor, 27, and his brother Randy, 22, were arrested at the home. Police were led to the home after an undercover sting in the parking lot of a North Hollywood gun and ammunition store Tuesday night resulted in the arrest of Adrian Bobis, 22, and Bardon Katz, also in his early 20s.

“It’s scary,” said Jeannie Kim, who lives next door to the Buenaflors on Rossmore Avenue. From her bedroom window, she saw “a lot of police” at the home until 3 a.m.

Another neighbor who had known the family about five years described widowed Madia Buenaflor as “very friendly” and a “wonderful neighbor.”

“The suspicion is that they were selling guns for profit, period, to whomever would buy them. There is no indication they were tied to narcotics or gangs,” said Police Capt. Robert Martin, commander of the detective headquarters division.

Martin described Berendo and Randy Buenaflor as “well-to-do folks” who portrayed themselves as avid gun collectors. Police believe that guns were purchased legally or illegally in other parts of the country and some were converted from semiautomatic to fully automatic weapons. Devices used in such conversions were also seized in the search.

It was a fast-moving investigation, Martin said. An informant’s tip to Detective Phil Anninos prompted a rendezvous Tuesday night in the parking lot of B&B; Guns in which Bobis was to sell five machine guns for $10,000. Katz apparently accompanied Bobis “as a bodyguard,” Martin said. The gun store had no direct involvement in the case, Martin said.

Police monitoring the transaction from a distance arrested Bobis and Katz without incident, seizing the five machine guns as well as fully loaded handguns the suspects were carrying.

Interviews with the suspects prompted police to obtain a search warrant for the Buenaflors’ home in the 200 block of North Rossmore Avenue. The investigation is continuing and the four suspects potentially face a wide variety of federal, state and local charges, Martin said. Bail was set at $250,000 each for the suspects, who were booked at Parker Center. A young woman who answered the intercom outside the Buenaflors’ security gate declined to comment on the police raid. Buenaflor and her late husband immigrated from the Philippines several years ago, a neighbor said. It was the neighbor’s understanding that the Buenaflors had made money in the Philippines operating nursery schools.