NEWARK – A pawn shop owner was sentenced to prison for possessing a firearm despite being a convicted felon. His shop was linked to a shooting death of a law enforcement officer.
U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said that Ahmed A-Hady, 36, of Keyport, was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
There had been a mass shooting in Jersey City on December 10, 2019. David Nathaniel Anderson and Francine Graham killed three civilians after earlier killing a law enforcement officer, police said.
In Anderson’s pocket was a handwritten note containing a phone number and an address. The phone number was registered to A-Hady and the address was for his pawn shop.
A search of the pawn shop and his home turned up multiple rifles, including an AR-15, handguns, a shotgun, and more than 400 rounds of ammunition, some of them hollow point bullets.
“One of the weapons recovered from the pawnshop was a Sig Sauer .22 caliber rifle capable of accepting a large capacity magazine,” police said. “Records showed that A-Hady purchased this rifle in Florida on Oct. 23, 2012, a time when he, as a convicted felon, was prohibited from possessing firearms. The purchase of this rifle came approximately five months after A-Hady was convicted in New Jersey Superior Court of a crime that was punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than one year.”
In addition to his prison term, he will have three years of supervised release.
Multiple agencies contributed to this case, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge George M. Crouch Jr. in Newark; special agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Charlie J. Patterson in Newark; the Office of the New Jersey Attorney General, under the direction of Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal; the N.J. State Police, under the direction of Col. Patrick J. Callahan; the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, under the direction of Prosecutor Esther Suarez, and the Jersey City Police Department, under the direction of Director James Shea.
