A 68-year-old Richmond County man, Kelvin Laron Howard, has been slapped with a nearly 15-year prison sentence after being found guilty of trafficking heroin and illegal firearm possession.
After a federal jury tattooed him with convictions, U.S. District Court Judge J. Randal Hall decided to lock away Howard for 175 months, imposed a $2,500 fine, and tacked on three years of supervised release, once he's out from behind bars, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia. Setting the stage for a tough response to crime, U.S. Attorney Jill E. Steinberg declared, "His sentence demonstrates there is no tolerance for armed drug dealers in our community."
The Richmond County Sheriff’s Office, paired with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, cast their net wide, which resulted in dredging up evidence against Howard. During a raid on Howard's apartment, the search team found heroin enough for over 700 doses, scales, and packing gear, along with $1,000 in cash and a loaded semi-automatic pistol.
"There is nothing more critical to ATF than increasing the safety of our communities," Beau Kolodka, the ATF's Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Office, said while focusing on stamping out violent criminals. "We will pursue criminals wherever they may operate, and they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," as per the U.S. Attorney's Office press release.
Richmond County Sheriff Richard Roundtree championed the jury's guilty verdict against Howard, seeing it as reflecting community resolve. Grinding down on the interplay of firearms and narcotics in criminal networks, he stated, "His conviction has the potential to save lives by having one less illegal firearm on the streets and illegal drugs in our community," as mentioned by the U.S. Attorney's Office.
The effort to bring Howard to justice was a coordinated one, involving both local and federal law enforcement resources, as well as the hard work of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Patricia G. Rhodes and L. Alexander Hamner who saw the prosecution through.
