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Man sentenced to over 7 years in fed drug case
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
A West Marion Avenue man who pleaded guilty last year to having a gun while selling drugs and for running a drug house is going to federal prison for the second time.
Judge John Adams of U.S. Northern District Court of Ohio on Monday sentenced Rafael Samaniego, 27, to 93 months in prison on charges of maintaining a drug premises and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking.
Samaniego also was given eight years of supervised release.
Members of the Youngs-town Police Department’s vice squad and Community Police Unit served a warrant in April 2018 to search Samaniego’s home and vehicle. Police found 34 bags of marijuana, a bag of crack cocaine, a pistol in his living room, a pistol in his car, and a digital scale with drug residue on it.
A federal grand jury indicted Samaniego in August. He entered his guilty pleas in October.
In 2012, Samaniego was indicted with 12 other people on drug charges, and in 2013, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute heroin. He was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.
Samaniego’s attorneys, in their sentencing memorandum, asked for a sentence of 87 months for their client. They said he suffers from mental-health issues compounded by the use of marijuana that began at 14 and the use of heroin that began at 18.
The memorandum also said Samaniego was wounded in a shooting when he was 9 and he still has shotgun pellets in his face from that shooting. His father was killed in Chicago shortly after, and his uncle was found shot to death in a burning SUV behind a vacant Harvard Street home on the North Side in January 2003.