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With the heat on, the Bloomfield ex-con headed south. Three months later, deputy U.S. marshals in Atlanta had him in custody.
Lewis, 29, will be headed to federal prison for a much longer stretch than before after taking a deal from the government.
Lewis pleaded guilty via videoconference with a federal judge in Newark on Thursday, July 28, to two counts of possession of a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon and two counts of possession with the intent to distribute drugs.
U.S. District Judge Brian R. Martinotti scheduled sentencing for Dec. 6. Lewis remains in federal custody until then.
Considering the likelihood he'd have been convicted at a trial, Lewis had little choice but to take a plea.
He'd been released early from state prison in July 2020 during the COVID pandemic after serving nine months for drug and weapons convictions, records show. Later that summer, he became the target of a local task force drug investigation headed by the sheriff's office.
Lewis was seen holding a rifle in the passenger seat of a Jeep Grand Cherokee that was chasing another vehicle in Elizabeth on Sept. 20, 2020, according to a grand jury indictment on file in U.S. District Court in Newark.
The rifle had a high-capacity magazine that contained 30 rounds of .300-caliber ammunition, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
Police chased the Jeep into Newark but lost it on Frelinghuysen Avenue. It was later found abandoned -- with the rifle inside -- on Van Vechten Street, authorities said.
Five days later, a raid on Lewis’s Bloomfield apartment turned up:
- a 9mm Glock pistol that had been reported stolen out of North Carolina, with an extended magazine;
- a .40-caliber Glock handgun, also with an extended magazine;
- varying quantities of heroin (stamped “Steel City”), crack and Xanax;
- drug paraphernalia, a scale and $800 in suspected drug cash.
Lewis quickly skipped town before the deputy marshals caught up with him in Georgia in early December.
Sellinger credited members of the Essex County Sheriff’s Office, special agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Newark Field Division, deputy marshals with the U.S. Marshals Services in New Jersey and Georgia with the investigation leading to the plea, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Levin of his National Security Unit in Newark.
Sellinger also thanked Bloomfield police for their assistance.
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