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Lester “Mayhem” Hicks, 29, was released on a summons after Essex County sheriff’s officers said they caught him with 78 heroin folds and an outstanding warrant during a traffic stop near the corner of Clinton and Avon avenues in March.
That same day, he was involved in a shooting near Martin Luther King Boulevard that was captured on video, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
Hicks agreed to surrender but, instead, headed south, Carpenito said.
DEA agents captured him in North Carolina carrying a sawed-off shotgun, the U.S. attorney said.
They charged him with having and selling heroin.
A federal judge this time ordered Hicks held after he was extradited to New Jersey.
Carpenito credited the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and special agents of the DEA with the investigation leading to the charges. He also thanked the Essex County Sheriff’s Office and the Newark Police Department for their assistance.
The investigation is part of the Newark Violent Crime Initiative (VCI), through which the U.S. Attorney’s Office has partnered with state, federal, county, and local law enforcement to investigate violent crime in Newark and surrounding cities, Carpenito said.
The VCI includes the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the DEA, ATF, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, the Essex County and prosecutor’s and sheriff’s offices, the New Jersey State Police Regional Operations and Intelligence Center/Real Time Crime Center, the New Jersey Department of Corrections and the New Jersey Parole Board, and police from Newark, East Orange and Irvington.
Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary E. Toscano, the deputy chief of Carpenito’s Criminal Division in Newark.
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ALSO SEE: A Newark man stabbed his ex-girlfriend when she wouldn't take him back, then fled to Maryland, where he was captured the same day, authorities said.
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