A felon who went to an Oakland police precinct to report his car stolen, but was surprised to find that it was the police themselves who had seized it and that they had found the AK-style pistol he had left inside, was sentenced to 42 months’ imprisonment today at the city’s federal courthouse.
Darryl Lawrence was linked by DNA to the firearm. Alert investigators also found an unspent rifle round matching those loaded in the pistol inside the SUV in which he arrived at the station.
He earlier pleaded guilty to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.
“You were in possession of a semi-automatic firearm loaded with more than 30 bullets…along with drugs packaged for sale,” noted U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín this afternoon.
On March 9 2024 officers from the Oakland Housing Authority Police Department were concerned to see a Mini Draco AK-style pistol left on the front seat of a Dodge Challenger parked outside apartments in the Lockwood Gardens projects.
On searching the car they also found a drum magazine, a digital scale and assorted drugs including marijuana. The vehicle was seized.
On March 11 Darryl Lawrence reported the vehicle stolen and went to the OHAPD station in a Nissan Pathfinder SUV. On arrival he appeared to officers to match the identity of a man seen near the car two days earlier
Realizing that he was on post release community supervision, officers elected to search the car he had arrived in and, inside, found one unspent 7.62×39 rifle round – the same caliber as loaded into the Mini Drako firearm. DNA found on the gun was later conclusively linked to the defendant.
Lawrence, 41, spent two decades in state prison after an assault with a firearm conviction in 2002 when he was 19 years old. On release he was convicted again for being a felon in possession of a firearm after being found by Fremont police with an AR-15-style rifle under his car, drugs in the car, and a bulletproof vest and handgun in a washing machine in his apartment.
Today in courtroom three of Oakland federal courthouse, Lawrence was sentenced to 42 months’ imprisonment by Judge Martinez-Olguín.
“I understand that you had a very challenging upbringing and exposure to a great deal of violence,” the judge told him. “I also know that you’ve spent much of your adult life in the Government’s custody as a result of some of the violence in which you’ve engaged,.
The judge originally imposed a 48 month sentence coupled with a direction that Lawrence serve the final six months in home confinement – in order, she said, to “get him home sooner’.
On being told by both prosecution and defense attorneys that, practically speaking, the sentence would not work out that way in practice, the judge changed tack and sentenced him to a 42 month term.
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