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Kenny Antrobus wants to add one item to the artwork, soccer trophies and family photographs that are a reminder of the daughter he lost at Trolley Square: the handgun that killed Vanessa Quinn.

"If I had it, I know it wouldn't kill anybody else," said Antrobus, of Cincinnati.

But the gun's owner wants it back, too - for similar reasons.

"The answer is an unqualified no," said David G. Darlington, of Rock Springs, Wyo.

"There will be no pissing matches. It's my property, plain and simple.

"He has my deepest sympathy, but I have some attachments to it, too, and I want it back. That's my right."

The Smith & Wesson .38 Special has been stored in an evidence room at the Salt Lake City Police Department since it was recovered after the Feb. 12 shootings at the mall.

On Monday, the last of three men charged in connection with the gun pleaded guilty, which means the gun will likely be returned to Darlington sometime next year.

Quinn, 29, was one of five people who died - four others were injured - when Sulejman Talovic stormed Trolley Square armed with the handgun and a 12-gauge shotgun.

Investigators later alleged Mackenzie Glade Hunter got the gun from Darlington's son Kolby, either by stealing it or trading cocaine for it, last summer. The allegation that drugs were involved remains under investigation in Wyoming, a Utah federal prosecutor said Monday.

'I was astounded'

Darlington bought the gun in 1974 and used it for "rolling tin cans." He reported the gun missing in June 2006 to Rock Springs police, but wasn't sure how it disappeared.

"I wasn't even sure when it went missing," Darlington said. When he noticed it missing from a safe where he typically kept it, Darlington figured it fell out of his vehicle and landed in a "muddy ditch along some country road."

At some point, he learned from his son the gun was in Salt Lake City with Hunter, who had stayed overnight in their Rock Springs home that summer.

And then, in February, he got a call from a Salt Lake City police detective who informed him Talovic had used the gun at Trolley Square. Quinn was the only person killed with the handgun.

"I was astounded," Darlington said.

Investigators say Hunter transferred the gun to Brenden Taylor Brown and then arranged for Brown to sell it to Talovic for $800. Matthew Hautala, who saw the Wyoming transfer to Hunter, and Brown have been sentenced to probation. Hunter's sentencing is set for Jan. 14.

Appeals are unlikely because all three accepted plea deals. That frees police to begin the process of returning the gun to Darlington.

Salt Lake City Det. Jeff Bedard said the department's policy is to destroy a gun if the owner used it in a crime. However, if a stolen gun is used in a crime, it typically is returned once investigators clear the owner of any involvement and court cases are resolved.

Symbol of grief

or recovery?

Antrobus' interest in the handgun stems in part from a documentary he saw about how a gun used to kill dozens of people traded hands numerous times.

"That stuck in my mind for a long time," he said. "It amazed me how many hands touched that gun and how many people were injured or hurt by it."

Antrobus said that, gruesome though it seems, he would like to add the handgun to a "shrine" he and wife, Sue, put together in their daughter's memory because "that is part of her life."

"I think the pistol ought to be right in there with it," said Antrobus, who would plug its barrel to ensure the handgun is incapable of being fired.

"It is not something I would be proud of, but it is something I know I could put somewhere where it could never hurt anybody," he said. "It's done this family nothing but heartaches."

But Darlington has symbolic reasons for wanting the gun back - and also vows to make sure it never kills another person. "It is a little bit insulting for him to think that if he had it, it wouldn't do any more harm," he said. "I guarantee if I have it, it won't do any more harm, either."

Darlington said he experienced his "own grief leading up to this and afterward." He views the handgun and its now sordid history as something that benefited his son, who, he has said, was having "huge problems" with drugs.

"All of this has been one of the things that got him to get his head out of you-know-where and I think he's going to be all right now," Darlington said. "Give my sympathy and condolences to the family. I don't want to cause them any grief. "But for various reasons, I want it back - for some of the same reasons they do, actually."