The Redmond City Council will consider donating thisColt M1911, seized by police in 2018, to the Maryland Museum of Military History for a display at the 5th Regiment Armory in Baltimore, where the item was first shipped in 1914.

A World War I-era pistol currently stored in the evidence room of the Redmond Police station could soon be heading home to the East Coast.

The Redmond City Council next week will consider donating the Colt M1911, seized by police in 2018, to the Maryland Museum of Military History for a display at the 5th Regiment Armory in Baltimore, where the item was first shipped in 1914.

The M1911, with serial number 69593, was reported stolen to Redmond Police in 1994 by its previous owner, whose name the department could not provide.

The firearm was recovered in 2018, when Redmond Police officers arrested a younger relative of the owner. Because the relative had a felony conviction, he wasn’t allowed to have the pistol. By that point, though, the original owner had died and the department could find no other surviving relatives, according to Police Chief Dave Tarbet. An officer contacted the owner’s insurance company, but it had released its interest in the item.

Ever since then, the gun has been stored in a cardboard box at the Redmond Police station.

The father of a Redmond community service officer took an interest in the pistol. Using its serial number, he learned it was made in 1914 at the Colt Armory in Hartford, Connecticut, and was included in a shipment of 200 guns to the adjutant general of the 5th Regiment Armory.

Designed by renowned firearms inventor John M. Browning, the M1911 has had a long relationship with the U.S. military. In the lead-up to the U.S. entry into World War I, it was issued primarily as a sidearm by officers.

The fortress-like armory still stands in midtown Baltimore and today houses a small military history museum displaying several original firearms. Tarbet called and learned the museum does not currently have any historic handguns to display.

On Tuesday, the seven-member City Council will consider a motion to declare the pistol surplus and donate it to the Maryland Museum of Military History.

Tarbet said he considered auctioning off the item, which he estimates could fetch several thousand dollars, or displaying the firearm at the department’s new police station, which is now being designed.

But he said after learning more about the gun’s history, he hopes the council sends it back to Maryland.

“It just fits there,” Tarbet said. “That’s where it deserves to be.”