HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A 38-year-old Kentucky man with a rap sheet stretching back over a decade has been slammed with federal time for toting a loaded handgun on West Virginia streets. Melvin Theophilius Hill, of Ashland, Kentucky, was sentenced today to five years and four months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, after pleading guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The bust went down May 2, 2022, when Huntington Police pulled over a vehicle Hill was driving near 13th Street and Ninth Avenue. During a lawful search, officers found a loaded FN 509 9mm handgun stuffed in the rear pocket of the front passenger seat. Hill didn’t play dumb—he admitted on the scene he put the gun there and knowingly had it in his possession.
That admission sealed his fate. Federal law draws a hard line: once a convicted felon, always barred from owning or carrying a gun. Hill was no stranger to the system. Court records show prior felony convictions in Boyd County, Kentucky—second-degree robbery on May 9, 2008, and first-degree possession of a controlled substance on January 12, 2011. He knew the rules. He broke them anyway.
U.S. Attorney Will Thompson, who announced the sentence, credited the swift work of the Huntington Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Courtney L. Cremeans and handed down by U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers, who showed no leniency for repeat offenders.
This conviction is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), the Justice Department’s frontline initiative to crush gun violence through coordinated federal, state, and local enforcement. Launched in full force on May 26, 2021, the strategy hinges on targeted enforcement, community trust, and measurable drops in violent crime.
Documents in the case, filed under No. 3:22-cr-134, are available via PACER. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of West Virginia maintains a full press release on its website, underscoring the feds’ zero-tolerance stance toward illegal firearms in high-risk zones.
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Key Facts
- State: West Virginia
- Agency: DOJ USAO
- Category: Weapons
- Source: Official Source ↗
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