Vanessa Roberts Avery, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that JAVON MOORNING, 43, of New Haven, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven to 105 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for possessing a stolen firearm, and for violating the conditions of his supervised release from a prior federal conviction.
According to court documents and statements made in court, in July 2011, Moorning was sentenced in New Haven federal court to 100 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, for distributing crack cocaine. In December 2014, Moorning’s sentence was reduced to 84 months of imprisonment.
Moorning was released from federal prison in June 2018. Shortly after his release, and while on supervised release, he sold heroin and crack cocaine to an individual working with law enforcement. When Moorning was arrested on July 24, 2018, he possessed additional amounts of heroin and crack cocaine. Moorning pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute and distribution of heroin and cocaine base (“crack”), and he admitted that he had violated his supervised release. On January 9, 2019, he was sentenced to 24 months of imprisonment and three years of supervised release.
Moorning was 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. Moorning ran from the vehicle, removed a 9mm handgun from his waistband and tossed it to the ground. State probation officers apprehended Moorning and found him in possession of approximately 20 individual-dose bags of suspected heroin, and quantities of crack cocaine and MDMA pills. A Hamden Police officer recovered the firearm that Moorning had discarded. The handgun, which was loaded, and had been reported stolen in South Carolina in 2020.
Moorning has been detained since June 3, 2022. He pleaded guilty on September 14, 2022.
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.