New Haven Man, 43, Gets Nearly 9 Years In Prison On Gun Case: Feds

NEW HAVEN, CT — Javon Moorning, 43, of New Haven will send the next near-nine years in a federal lockup for having a loaded handgun that had been reported stolen in South Carolina in 2020, according to the Justice Department.

U.S. Attorney for Connecticut Vanessa Roberts Avery said Moorning was sentenced in U.S. District Court Tuesday to serve 105 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty in September 2022 to possessing a stolen firearm, and to violating the conditions of his supervised release from a prior federal conviction.

According to Avery, court documents and statements made in court, in July 2011, Moorning was sentenced in New Haven federal court to 100 months in prison for dealing crack. In December 2014, his sentence was reduced to 84 months, Avery said, and he was released from federal prison in June 2018.

Shortly after, and while on supervised release, he sold heroin and crack cocaine to an individual working with law enforcement, Avery said. When Moorning was arrested on July 24, 2018, he had heroin and crack on him, she said. He pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute and distribution of heroin and crack and admitted that he had violated his supervised release, according to Avery. On January 9, 2019, he was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release, prosecutors said.

Released from prison in April 2020, a month later, according to Avery and court records, he was a passenger in a car that crashed into a tree behind a residence on Whitney Avenue in Hamden. Prosecutors said he and an "associate" had tried to run from state probation and Hamden police officers, who were serving probation violation warrants. Moorning "ran from the vehicle, removed a 9mm handgun from his waistband and tossed it to the ground," Avery said. State probation officers caught him and found him in possession of around 20 individual-dose bags of suspected heroin, and quantities of crack cocaine and MDMA pills, Avery said. A Hamden police officer found the firearm Moorning had tried to get rid of, federal prosecutors said. The loaded handgun had been reported stolen in South Carolina in 2020, according to Avery.

This matter was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Hamden Police Department, the Connecticut Office of Adult Probation, and the New Haven State’s Attorney’s Office. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah P. Karwan.