3rd ex-Texas Tech player charged with felony burglary

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) A third Texas Tech football player who was kicked off the team last month has been charged with burglary in connection with the theft of at least seven guns, jail and court records showed.

Records show 20-year-year Dakota Devon Allen was arrested late Thursday on a charge of burglary of a habitation, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Jail records don't list attorney information for Allen, who was released early Friday on $5,000 bond.

Allen, 18-year-old Trace Keaton Ellison and 20-year-old Robert James Castaneda are accused of breaking into a Lubbock home sometime between Dec. 20 and Jan. 9 and stealing a gun safe containing handguns and rifles. Ellison and Castaneda have already been charged, and court records show they don't yet have attorneys. Investigators will present their findings to a grand jury, which next meets Tuesday.

Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury kicked the trio off the team last month for ''failure to uphold student-athlete expectations.''

Mark Howard, former coach at Centennial High School in Frisco, Texas, where Ellison played, said he was shocked at the young man's arrest.

''He was not in trouble with the law when he was back in high school,'' Howard said. ''Trace was a positive part of our program. He followed all the rules.''

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, investigators say the owner of the stolen shotguns was in a pawnshop in March looking for a new gun and found one of stolen guns there. That led investigators a man who told police he had paid Castaneda $1,400 for several weapons. Police later determined those weapons had been stolen during the burglary.

When investigators interviewed Castaneda on May 3, he initially told them he bought the guns illegally and cheaply, and that he intended to resell them. Later, according to the affidavit, Castaneda told them he and the other two individuals broke into the home trying to steal money from a drug dealer who lived there, but instead took the gun safe with the weapons inside, the affidavit said.

Castaneda was reluctant to name the two other individuals but eventually told investigators their jersey numbers, the affidavit said.

''Castaneda advised the money he received from the guns he gave to his father because he was `broke,''' according to the affidavit.