Ansonia Man Gets 5 Years for Gun, Heroin Distribution

Armed and high on the edge of a drug-fueled collapse, 26-year-old Marcos Boyd of Ansonia, Connecticut, chose violence over surrender — and now he’s paying five long years behind bars. Boyd was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Hartford to 60 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for being a drug dealer in possession of a loaded firearm.

The standoff that sealed his fate unfolded on November 10, 2015, when the U.S. Marshals Service Violent Fugitive Task Force, alongside Ansonia Police and Connecticut Department of Correction parole officers, tracked Boyd to a High Street residence. On parole and already a fugitive since January 2015, Boyd didn’t go quietly. As law enforcement approached, he climbed out of a second-floor bedroom window — gripping a loaded .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. With a six-year-old child inside the home, the scene teetered on disaster.

Boyd retreated back inside and barricaded himself in a bathroom, stalling a tense confrontation that could have ended in tragedy. When he finally surrendered, federal agents seized the firearm, fully loaded and ready to fire. But the arsenal of crime didn’t stop there. A search of his bedroom turned up 18.6 grams of heroin, drug packaging materials, and $6,763 in cash — the unmistakable fingerprints of a street-level dealer operating in plain sight.

On September 12, 2016, Boyd pleaded guilty to one count of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime — a charge that carries mandatory minimums and no room for leniency. His criminal record, already scarred by four prior drug-related felony convictions, told prosecutors and the court he was a repeat player in the city’s violent underground economy.

Boyd, who has remained in custody since his arrest, will not begin serving his federal sentence until he completes a separate state sentence in June 2017. The delayed start is cold comfort to those fighting the opioid epidemic in New Haven County, where every gram of heroin and every illegal gun fuels cycles of addiction and violence.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Rahul Kale, under the watch of Deirdre M. Daly, then-U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut. For Boyd, the gavel has fallen — but in Ansonia, the damage from his choices still echoes in the streets and in the homes left behind.

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