New Haven Man Faces 12 Years Prison After Firearm Guilty Plea: Feds

NEW HAVEN, CT —Javon Mooring, 43, of New Haven, waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty Wednesday in U.S. District Court to possession of a stolen firearm, the US Attorney for Connecticut said. Moorning also admitted that he violated the conditions of his supervised release from a prior federal conviction, prosecutors said.

According to U.S. Attorney Vanessa Roberts Avery, court documents and statements made in court, in July 2011, Moorning was sentenced in New Haven federal court to 100 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for distributing crack cocaine. In December 2014, Moorning’s sentence was reduced to 84 months, she said. Shortly after his June 2018 release from federal prison, while supervised, sold heroin and crack cocaine to a police informant, per Avery. When Moorning was arrested July 24, 2018, he had "additional amounts of heroin and crack cocaine," prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute, and distribution, of heroin and crack, per Avery. Mooring also "admitted that he had violated his supervised release," she said. In January 2019, he was sentenced to 24 months three years of supervised release.

Released from prison in April 2020, on May 17, 2022, he was a passenger in a car that crashed into a tree behind a residence on Whitney Avenue in Hamden after he and an associate attempted to flee from state probation and Hamden Police officers who were serving probation violation warrants, Avery said. He ran from the vehicle, removed a 9mm handgun from his waistband and tossed it to the ground, prosecutors said. State probation officers caught Moorning and, Avery said, he had on him around 20 individual-dose bags of suspected heroin, quantities of crack cocaine and MDMA pills. A Hamden police officer found the gun he tossed, which was loaded, and had been reported stolen in South Carolina in 2020, prosecutors said.

At sentencing Dec. 7, Moorning faces a maximum of 10 years for possessing the stolen firearm, and up to two years for violating the conditions of his supervised release.

This matter has been 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 is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah P. Karwan.