A man from Springfield with involvement in a local gang has been sentenced in federal court.
In a press release, the Department of Justice said that 28-year-old Darius Thomas has been sentenced to 3 years in federal prison without parole, followed by 3 years of supervised release, after two incidents back in 2023.
The DOJ release says that Thomas has ties to “FTO”, an area gang that’s been connected to previous violent crimes and firearm offenses.
In June of 2023, Springfield Police officers responded to a reported altercation between two men in a Kum & Go parking lot on South National Avenue.
The men were yelling and waving guns at an unarmed man, and Thomas was identified as one of the armed men in security footage of the incident.
Later that month, SPD officers responded to another incident of a group of people brandishing firearms in an apartment complex parking lot.
When the occupants of the vehicles, one of which Thomas was in, were questioned, Thomas told the officers that the people lived in the complex and were just smoking weed outside.
Officers asked him about the firearms that had been reported, but Thomas said he couldn’t buy a firearm because he smoked weed.
He then allowed officers to search his vehicle, where they found a backpack with ammunition and magazines that fit a Glock pistol. The officers later arrested Thomas in August and found a loaded Glock 29 in his possession that he purchased unlawfully.
Thomas was taken to court and plead guilty to charges of being an unlawful user of a controlled substance while in possession of a firearm and of making a false statement during a firearm purchase.
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