Bradford, J.
Fort Wayne police responded to a dispatch of an armed individual who had pointed a gun at a female and located Appellant-Defendant Georon Harris, who matched the description in the dispatch, sitting in front of an apartment at 810 Oaklawn Court (“the Apartment”). As two police officers approached, they saw Harris remove a black handgun from his waistband, open the front door of the Apartment, place the gun on the floor just inside the door, and close the door. The officers could not see into the Apartment. After securing Harris, one of the officers opened the Apartment’s door, reached inside, and retrieved the handgun from the floor. The State charged Harris with Class A misdemeanor carrying a handgun without a permit. Harris filed a motion to suppress the gun, which motion the trial court denied. Following trial, a jury found Harris guilty as charged, and the trial court sentenced him to 210 days of incarceration.
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Under the circumstances of this case, we conclude that exigent circumstances justified Officer Lichtsinn’s seizure of the handgun. Harris placed the handgun inside the Apartment, into which the police officers could not see. As such, the officers had no way of knowing if there was anybody in the Apartment who could have concealed or used the handgun to open fire on the police officers who were in the vicinity of the front door and porch. Moreover, any young children who happened to be in the Apartment would have had easy access to the handgun, placing them and others in obvious danger. Despite the fact that the officers had no positive indications that anybody was in the Apartment, we conclude that the extremely dangerous nature of the handgun and the potential for evidence tampering are sufficient to establish exigent circumstances. See, e.g., U.S. v. Webb, 83 F.3d 913, 917 (7th Cir. 1996) (upholding warrantless search of car based on exigent circumstances when defendant tossed gun in trunk of car because gun could easily fire and was accessible to passersby). We conclude that the seizure of the gun did not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment.
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We conclude that the seizure of the handgun was reasonable pursuant to Article I, Section 11. Consequently, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the admission of the handgun.
BARNES, J., and BROWN, J., concur.