BANGOR, Maine — A Connecticut gang member will spend 25 years behind bars on a cocaine charge, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Christian Turner, 29, formerly of New Haven, was also ordered to serve five years of supervised release at his sentencing Friday in U.S. District Court.
Turner pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to distribute 280 grams of cocaine base last September.
Court records indicate Turner and other conspirators were members of a New Haven street gang, the Red Side Guerilla Brims, which are affiliated with the Almighty Blood Nation, and Turner conspired between January 2010 and August 2013 to acquire more than 5 kilograms of crack in New Haven and distribute it in Penobscot County.
Turner and other conspirators would sell the contraband in multiple half-gram and gram amounts for $40 and $80, with the drug money going back to Connecticut.
Turner also obtained 14 handguns over that period from Bangor and Brewer pawn shops and seven other firearms through private transactions, and the weapons were paid for with cash and drugs. In all, over 25 firearms were illegally acquired and transported back to New Haven, where they were transferred to others.
In handing down the sentence, Judge John Woodcock said the message “to those people like members of the Red Side Guerilla Brims is this: Stay away from Bangor.”
The case was investigated by the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency; the New Haven Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the New Haven Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert Spector and Peter Markle of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut assisted in the investigation and prosecution of the case.
