A Harvey man was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday (July 12), after he pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing fentanyl, the synthetic opiate painkiller federal authorities say is linked to a spike in overdose deaths in the United States in recent years.

After a jury was seated for his trial, Courtney Ables, 36, pleaded guilty as charged to possession with intent to distribute fentanyl and of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

Judge Stephen Grefer of the 24^th Judicial District Court sentenced Ables to 20 years for each offense without the benefit of probation or suspended sentence, and ran them concurrently.

Judge Grefer then sentenced Ables to 20 years as a triple offender, also run concurrently. Ables’ criminal history includes convictions of aggravated flight from an officer, writing worthless checks and possession with intent to distribute marijuana.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is up to 50 times more powerful than street-level heroin and has been linked to thousands of overdoses and deaths nationwide during the past two years – Prince’s death on April 21 was ruled an accidental overdose from fentanyl. The DEA last month issued an alert to law enforcement officers, warning them to handle the narcotic carefully during investigations.

Ables’ charges stemmed from his March 8, 2015 arrest by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, whose deputies went to a home in the 4000 block of Indigo Court to investigate a complaint about a gun being fired. A resident reported that someone fired a bullet through his exterior wall and into a bedroom, according to the arrest report.

Deputies investigating the bullet trajectory traced it to the neighboring home – where Ables lived with his parents, according to the report. The parents denied knowledge of a firearm being discharged but allowed the deputies to search the house.

The deputies noted the bullet was fired from within Ables’ bedroom. They found Ables hiding in his parents’ bathroom, according to the report.

In the back yard, meanwhile, a deputy noted an overturned children’s swimming pool and found underneath it a gray lock box, the key to which was on Ables’ keychain, according to the report. Inside it were two pistols and 16 grams of fentanyl packed in individual baggies for resale.

Ables pleaded guilty to both offenses on Aug. 25, 2015. However a panel of judges at the state 5^th Circuit Court of Appeal vacated the plea and sentencing on Feb. 25, finding an error in how the plea was handled in the trial court.

On remand, Ables initially opted to stand trial, which began Tuesday morning with jury selection. He changed his mind and pleaded guilty to the charges a second time late in the afternoon just after a jury was seated.

Assistant District Attorneys Thomas Sanderson and Josh Vanderhooft prosecuted the case.

A Metairie man was convicted as charged on Thursday (June 23) of attempted second-degree murder and two other offenses, for shooting an Avondale woman more than 10 times during a home invasion two years ago.

Danny “Noonie” Saulny, 25, a former Avondale resident, faces up to 50 years in prison for attempted second-degree murder, 10 years to 20 years for convicted felon in possession of a firearm and five years to 30 years for home invasion in connection with the Jan. 13, 2014 crimes. Judge Conn Regan of the 24^th Judicial District Court is scheduled to sentence Saulny on July 18.

The victim, who was 23 years old at the time, testified on Wednesday that she was in her kitchen cooking a meal at the home in the 100 block of Madeira Drive, when Saulny and a second gunman entered, saying “give me everything you got.”

She recognized only Saulny, whom she knew by his nickname Noonie from elementary school. Crying throughout her testimony, she told the jury she is “a million-percent certain” that Saulny was one of the gunmen.

“Noonie had me by my hair and drug me toward the kitchen while the other guy was kicking me,” she testified. They then dragged her to a bedroom. She stood against her godchild’s crib when she retrieved a wallet from a dresser to give to the assailants.

She said Saulny held a gun to the back of her head, and she turned her head as he fired. The bullet struck her in the cheek, she testified. She then struggled with the men as they shot her.

“They just kept firing at me, and I was trying to fight,” she testified. After falling to the ground, she said she then heard Saulny say, “’I think she’s dead. Let’s go.’”

She said she remained on the floor bleeding until the assailants left, and then ran to a neighbor’s home four doors down. She collapsed into a neighbor’s arms, struggling to speak because the bullet that struck her cheek caused severe damage to her tongue.

The neighbor testified that the victim also identified “Noonie” as one of the gunmen before calling 911.

She said she was shot more than 10 times, causing 15 bullet holes. She has still has bullet projectiles and fragments in her body and still faces more surgeries she testified.

She identified Saulny as one of the gunmen in a photographic line-up presented by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, according to testimony.

She later asserted she saw the second gunman in the Jefferson Parish Courthouse, during a court hearing. She said she recognized the man by a tattoo on one of his hands. The Sheriff’s Office identified the suspect, but prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence on which to base a criminal charge, according to testimony.

Saulny denied being involved, and his attorneys said the victim identified the wrong person.

He was barred from having guns because of a 2011 conviction of possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, which was an aggravated second-degree battery in 2010. He received a six year prison sentence. He also has convictions of resisting arrest and theft in 2010.

Assistant District Attorneys Blair Constant and Lynn Schiffman prosecuted the case.

 

 

 

A River Ridge man who tried to carjack an undercover Jefferson Parish detective was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Thursday (June 2), after he pleaded guilty to that crime and to possession with intent to distribute cocaine for the crack rocks that deputies found stashed between his buttocks.

Jonas Kelly, 33, also pleaded guilty to being a double offender under Louisiana’s habitual offender law, because of a 2006 burglary conviction. Judge Stephen Grefer of the 24^th Judicial District Court, who accepted the guilty pleas, ran the sentences concurrently for a total of 15 years.

Kelly pleaded guilty to attempted carjacking and possession with intent to distribute cocaine. The latter offense stems from the 11 rocks of crack cocaine deputies found hidden between his buttock cheeks after he was arrested for the carjacking attempt.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Detective Patrick Evans was dressed in plain clothing and in a black Ford Mustang parked near Wilker Neal and Newton streets in River Ridge, conducting patrol operations in the high-crime area, when Kelly approached him about 10 p.m., according to the arrest affidavit.

Kelly approached the passenger’s side and pulled on the door handle with his left hand while holding his right hand behind his back in implying that he had a weapon, according to the affidavit. Kelly told the detective to “open the door.”

Evans asked the suspect what he wanted, and Kelly responded by saying he wanted the car. Evans then pulled his pistol out, leading Kelly to back away. Kelly then walked into a crowd of people, and Evans called for assistance of other deputies, who arrested the suspect.

During the search on the scene, the deputies found the crack cocaine that later was weighed at 1.9 grams. The deputies also found $61 in cash in denominations consistent with narcotics sales.

Kelly was scheduled to stand trial on the two charges on Thursday. A panel of potential jurors was lined up outside Judge Grefer’s courtroom, waiting to being jury selection when deputies escorted the people away.

Kelly then pleaded guilty. He entered both pleas under North Carolina vs. Alford, named for a 1970 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Kelly refused to admit that he was in fact guilty but that he was pleading guilty because the prosecutors had sufficient evidence to prove the charges at trial.

In comments to the judge, Kelly denied trying to carjack the deputy. But he said the crack cocaine was his.

Prosecutors filed the double bill on the attempted carjacking charge, citing the 2006 burglary conviction for which he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

In that case, he burglarized a Newton Street apartment just three blocks from where he attempted to carjack the detective. He also pleaded guilty in that case to possession with intent to distribute cocaine and two counts of witness intimidation.

At the time of his arrest for the attempted carjacking, he was on probation for his 2012 conviction of possession of alprazolam. On March 21, he stipulated he violated his probation because of the latest case, and the original sentence of four years in prison was imposed. That sentence is run concurrently with the 15-year sentence he received on Thursday.

Assistant District Attorneys Matt Clauss and Thomas Sanderson prosecuted the case.

 

Westley Simmons told jurors that Jefferson Parish deputies framed him as payback for a 2007 crime in New Orleans, where he shot a rifle at a police officer. “They put crack on me, heroin on me and a gun they got out the back,” he testified of his Nov. 15, 2014 arrest in an apartment in Harvey’s Tallow Tree neighborhood.

The Jefferson Parish jury deliberated about 3 1/2 hours on Wednesday night (May 25), finding Simmons guilty as charged of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, possession of cocaine, possession of heroin, possession of tramadol without a prescription and of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.

Simmons, 26, of Avondale, who declined a pretrial offer this week to plead guilty in exchange for a 10-year sentence as a double offender, will be sentenced on June 17 by 24^th Judicial District Court Judge Ray Steib.

He faces 10 years to 20 years for the firearm charge, two to 30 years for possession with intent to distribute cocaine, four to 10 years for each of the cocaine and heroin possession counts and up to five years for the tramadol.

He was barred by law from possessing guns because of his 2007 conviction in New Orleans Criminal District Court of aggravated assault on a peace officer with a firearm. He additionally had convictions of resisting arrest in 2007 and attempted convicted felon in possession of a firearm in 2009.

Wednesday’s conviction stems from his arrest in an apartment in the 1100 Orange Blossom Lane. Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies had gotten an alert through a license plate recognition camera of a stolen Ford Explorer in the area and investigated.

The vehicle was parked in front of the apartment, where a man exited and told deputies that the man who drove the vehicle was inside. The deputies went to the front door, which was not completely closed, and knocked. They smelled marijuana smoke and entered, according to testimony.

They saw Simmons standing in the kitchen. Simmons saw the uniformed deputies and tried to run out of the back door, Deputy Chad Gagnon testified. “Once he saw that, he had the deer-in-the-headlights look,” Gagnon testified.

A locked security bar prevented Simmons from getting out of the back door. Deputy Blake Hollifield testified that Simmons resisted, and the deputy noted a hard object in the suspect’s pants waistband. It was a loaded semiautomatic pistol with a round in the chamber, meaning it was ready to be fired, Hollifield said.

The deputies found in Simmons’ pockets two grams of heroin and 5.5 grams of crack cocaine, wrapped in individual pieces, along with a half-gram of power cocaine and five tramadol pills. The deputies also found a digital scale and a cigar roller in his pockets, along with the key to the stolen vehicle.

A second man, Randy Owens, 32, of Algiers, also was arrested in the apartment. He pleaded guilty on April 27 to possession with intent to distribute marijuana and attempted possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Steib suspended a five-year prison sentence and ordered Owens to serve five years of probation.

Assistant District Attorneys Angad Ghai and Blair Constant prosecuted the case.

A Harvey man arrested last year after deputies found more than 50 grams of heroin hidden in a coffee maker in his girlfriend’s home pleaded guilty on Wednesday (April 27) and accepted a 25-year prison sentence.

As his trial was set to begin, Megile Carter, 36, offered to plead guilty as charged to possession with intent to distribute heroin, possession of marijuana and possession of marijuana and heroin in the presence of children.

Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office narcotics agents arrested Carter on March 3, 2015, after finding 50.7 grams of heroin while serving a search warrant at his girlfriend’s home in the 6000 block of 6^th Street.

The agents found 37 baggies of heroin, packaged for street-level distribution, and two lumps of the narcotic stuffed in a sock that was hidden in a coffee maker’s filter compartment.

The heroin was within reach of the six young children who lived in the home, the detectives said. The agents also found a bag of marijuana and a marijuana cigarette in a bedroom. Carter admitted the narcotics were his, according to the arrest affidavit.

With a pool of prospective jurors waiting in an adjacent courtroom to begin jury selection, Judge June Darensburg of the 24^th Judicial District Court accepted Carter’s guilty plea and sentenced him to 25 years.

Carter received two six-month sentences for the marijuana and possession of drugs in the presence of children offenses. Judge Darensburg ran the sentences concurrently.

Carter’s convictions include second-degree battery, conspiracy to distribute 200-400 grams of cocaine and first- and second-offense marijuana possession, court records show.

Assistant District Attorneys Josh Vanderhooft and Rachel Africk prosecuted the case.