Woman arrested for stealing machine gun used dead sister's identity, report says

CONVERSE, Texas - A woman accused of stealing a machine gun from a shooting range has been arrested.

Bexar County Sheriff's deputies took Amber Nicole Herring, 25, into custody on Monday and charged her with possession of a prohibited firearm/machine gun and theft of a firearm.

The theft took place around 2 p.m. on May 5 at LoneStar Handgun off Amendment Way in Converse.

According to an alert the store owner sent out on Monday, the woman came in and rented a handgun to use on the firing range. A few minutes later, she rented a Heckler Koch Fully Automatic 9mm MP5, submachine gun, but instead of going out to the shooting range, she walked out of the store, hopped into a white Ford Ranger and drove off.

The Texas driver's license given to rent the firearms was what store officials said in an alert "from someone who was killed in a car fire in December 2022." They said the woman looked similar to the woman on the ID.

Surveillance video from inside the store showed the suspect had tattoo with letters on her right chest and several other tattoos on her arm and hand.

Deputies started their investigation with the name on the drivers license given that was found to be that of a dead woman. During their research, they used social media of that woman's relatives and matched Herring to one of the Facebook accounts. They also were able to identify the woman on Facebook had the same tattoos as the woman on the surveillance video.

Investigators determined that the woman who died in 2022 and who's ID was used to rent the weapons was Herring's sister.

The employee who rented the guns to the suspect positively identified Herring from a photo lineup.

Herring is being held in the Bexar County Jail on a combined $30,000 bond.