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Man wanted on heroin charges found
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A man who has been missing since police found $500,000 worth of heroin in his home in December was found last week.
Members of the Mahoning Valley Law Enforcement Task Force arrested Philip Lemon, 28, at a home on Taft Avenue on the South Side while serving a search warrant in another investigation.
City police officer Bob Patton, who works as a task force investigator, said Lemon was spotted at the home by officers doing surveillance before the warrant was served.
“It was kind of like a bonus,” Patton said.
Lemon is now in the Mahoning County jail on charges of possession of heroin, a first-degree felony with major drug-offender specifications and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Lemon was not present Dec. 10 when members of the city’s vice squad served a search warrant at a McHenry Street home on the East Side and found three pounds of suspected heroin, along with two .22-caliber semiautomatic pistols, ammunition for the guns, two scales and $480 in cash.
A grand jury handed up an indictment against Lemon about a week after the home was searched.
Lemon has a history of previous drug offenses. He was sentenced in federal court in 2012 after he was indicted in 2011 for being part of a ring distributing heroin on the East Side. He was one of 25 people indicted in the U.S. Northern District Court of Ohio. A county grand jury indicted an additional 37 people for their roles in the ring.
Lemon pleaded guilty and was to serve 30 months in prison, but he failed to appear and was indicted on another federal charge in 2012 for skipping his sentencing. He was taken into custody in that case, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months. Records do not show if that sentence was concurrent or consecutive to the 30-month sentence he received as part of the drug ring.
In May 2014, he was indicted in Mahoning County as being a member of the E Block gang on the West Side even though he was still in prison. He pleaded guilty in that case in December 2014 and was given a nine-month sentence to run concurrent with his federal sentences. He is on three years’ probation.
Police said at the time the suspected heroin was found it was probably being held to be given to other dealers to sell. It had not yet been “cut,” or diluted to increase its volume and the amount of money it could bring in, police added.