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So Ex-con Antoine Hawkins, 31, of Newark, took a deal from the government and was formally sentenced to 12 years in federal prison on Friday, May 31, for shooting two victims five days apart in the Brick City in August 2020.
Hawkins must serve no less than 10 years of his plea-bargained sentence before he'll be eligible for release because there's no parole in the federal prison system.
Surveillance video shows Hawkins shooting one of his victims on a Newark street on Aug. 18, 2020, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.
Hawkins was then identified in a Newark shooting five days earlier, the U.S. attorney said.
Cartridge casings from the locations of both shootings were a ballistics match, he said.
Officers who took Hawkins into custody on Sept. 16, 2020 found him carrying a 9mm Springfield Armory XDM pistol with an extended magazine that held 19 rounds, Sellinger said.
A search warrant executed at Hawkins’s home turned up, among other items, 626 glassine envelopes containing heroin and three 9-millimeter magazines, he said.
Hawkins ended up pleading guilty to possession of a firearm and ammo as a convicted felon and a host of drug offenses.
In addition to the prison time, U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden sentenced him to three years of supervised release.
Several law enforcement agencies worked the case under the auspices of the Violent Crime Initiative (VCI) in Newark, a supergroup of sorts that fights violent crime in and around the city, Sellinger said.
He specifically cited the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, Newark police, the DEA and the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) for their work leading to the plea secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Levin of his National Security Unit in Newark.
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