Seven guns were taken last month from an evidence room at the Maine Warden Service in Gray, officials confirmed Friday.

State police are investigating the incident as a burglary.

This marks the first time evidence has been taken from the room in the roughly 20 years he has been on the job, said Col. Thomas Santaguida, chief of the Maine Warden Service.

“It’s a big deal to me,” he said. “These were guns, and they’re out there somewhere.” He doesn’t know who might have them, whether they might have ended up in the hands of kids.

Two of the guns were being held as evidence in ongoing cases. Both defendants in those cases fled the state before they could be prosecuted, Santaguida said.

He had arrested one of those defendants in 1988 in connection with an illegal bear hunting case in Lovell. That defendant was last known living in Florida, he said. In that case, plenty of other evidence remains to implicate the man, Santaguida said.

Five of the guns had been evidence in past cases, already adjudicated. Of those, two of the guns were earmarked for melting; the remaining three to be sold at auction.

Warden officials noticed the burglary Sept. 23 and called state police to investigate. The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife building is a couple of hundred yards from Maine State Police barracks.

The strike plate on the steel door to the evidence room appeared to be jimmied. There was no deadbolt on the evidence-room door. None of the three exterior doors into the building’s ground floor had been forced, Santaguida said. One of those doors appeared to be ajar.

State police aren’t saying much about the investigation. Crime scene experts converged on the scene and collected evidence.

Sgt. Walter Grzyb said he won’t detail the missing items.

He said police haven’t ruled out an inside job. “We’re looking at that possibility, certainly.”

Only evidence was taken during the burglary, he said. Nothing else in the building has been discovered missing.

In addition to the evidence room, the building houses offices of fisheries and wildlife biologists as well as game wardens.

Only two officers have keys to the room, Santaguida said.

Security in the building was lax, he said. A receptionist sat near the front door. Not everyone was logged in and out of the building. The public also could access the building through two other doors.

That is likely to change, he said. Officials are reviewing ways to upgrade security.

The practice of allowing groups to use the building after hours might change also, he said.

“We can’t have a situation where evidence is being compromised. It’s crazy,” he said. “My feeling is we’re going to have to rigorously control access.”

In addition, security in accessing the evidence room itself is expected to be beefed up.

There are five regional evidence lockers throughout the state, in addition to two storage areas in Augusta, Santaguida said.