A Terrytown man tied to the violent Harvey Hustlers gang that trafficked narcotics on West Jefferson streets was sentenced on Thursday (April 7) to 20 years in prison.
Charles D. Gumms, 22, received the punishment for his Feb. 16 guilty plea to racketeering, conspiracy to distribute cocaine, conspiracy to distribute heroin and marijuana, possession with intent to distribute marijuana and possession with intent to distribute Tramadol. He received a total of 20 years in prison for those offenses.
Gumms also pleaded guilty on Thursday to being a double offender under Louisiana’s habitual offender law, in light of his 2013 conviction of possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. His sentence as a double offender was 20 years, run concurrently with his punishment for the racketeering and narcotics offenses.
Gumms was one of 21 people named in a 30-count indictment filed in state court last year, charging Harvey Hustlers and their affiliates in a sweeping racketeering case built around crack cocaine and heroin distribution ring. Gumms was among the last of those defendants to either plead guilty or be convicted at trial.
Although he pleaded guilty on Feb. 16, his sentencing was postponed to Thursday, until after he received his punishment in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court for probation violation. He pleaded guilty in January 2013 to an illegal gun possession charge and two misdemeanor offenses.
For the probation revocation, he was sentenced to three years in prison by an Orleans Parish judge on March 28.
Jefferson Parish’s Judge Henry Sullivan of the 24th Judicial District Court, who presided over the Harvey Hustler cases, ran the 20-year sentence he handed down on Thursday concurrently with the three years he received for the probation revocation.
Two months before he was indicted in the Harvey Hustlers case, Gumms was shot several times in Terrytown. He and Shamyra Plumer, 18, were in his car in the 2100 block of Esplanade Place in Terrytown, when a gunman or gunmen opened fire.
Gumms drove to a convenience store at Terry Parkway and Carol Sue Avenue, where he ran inside the business and collapsed, according to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. Deputies’ found Plummer’s body in the back seat of the car.
Assistant District Attorneys Doug Freese and Seth Shute prosecuted the cases.
