A Raleigh man has pleaded guilty to having "machine gun conversion devices" near Lenovo Center during the 2025 North Carolina State Fair, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Luis Alberto Guerra-Martinez was charged in October 2025 with possession of a machine gun.
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According to court documents, on Oct. 24, 2025, during the fair, Guerra-Martinez was stopped for driving erratically in the parking lot between the North Carolina State Fairgrounds and the Lenovo Center.
Ellis Boyle, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina told WRAL News in a phone interview on Wednesday that a Dunn police officer working security had stopped Guerra-Martinez.
"I don't think they had any idea going into it that this was going to be a situation where they discover a whole arsenal of guns in the parking lot," Boyle said.
Guerra-Martinez got out of his car and attempted to run away, officials said. According to documents, police found five guns and two drop-in sears in the car, which convert semi-automatic guns into fully automatic machine guns.
Officers also found marijuana, THC vape cartridges, a machete, a hunting knife and a Lenovo Center radio inside.
A news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office says Guerra-Martinez had recently been fired Guerra-Martinez had recently been fired from Lenovo, where he had worked as a janitor for a third-party contractor.
Boyle noted it's unclear why Guerra-Martinez was in the area that night.
"He was recently terminated from there, and you know, he was in the parking lot, he wasn't in going to the concert, he wasn't working, he wasn't at the State Fair, so it was certainly suspicious," he said.
There was an NBA Young Boy concert going on at Lenovo Center at the time, along with the thousands attending the fair.
"We needed to remove him from all this group of people, which, again, he didn't do anything like a mass shooting, but ... we were worried, and we had suspicions that we wanted to ensure that we protected the safety of the public," Boyle said.
The FBI Raleigh Safe Streets Taskforce, the Wake County Sheriff's Office, the Raleigh Police Department and the Dunn Police Department investigated the case, according to federal prosecutors.
"The FBI Safe Streets Violent Crime Initiative was designed to allow each FBI field office to address violent street gangs and drug-related violence through the establishment of FBI-sponsored, long-term, proactive task forces focusing on violent gangs, crimes of violence, and the apprehension of violent fugitives," said an FBI spokesperson in an email to WRAL.
Guerra-Martinez faces up to 10 years in prison. He is scheduled for a sentencing hearing on May 5 in Wilmington.