By Mike Donoghue
BURLINGTON — A gun-toting Springfield, Mass. area man, who is facing federal charges for crack cocaine distribution in Bennington County, has made death threats to people that he thinks may have cooperated with law enforcement, officials said.
Anthony “Ace” Alonso-Alomar, 19, appeared in U.S. District Court in Burlington this week on charges that he aided and abetted the sale of crack cocaine on Nov. 21 and actually sold the drug on Dec. 12.
A confidential informant made the two felony drug buys in the Union Street neighborhood, according to the criminal complaint.
A joint investigation by the Bennington County Sheriff’s Department and Bennington Police into Alonso-Alomar and his associates began last summer for illegal distribution of controlled substances, court papers note.
Alonso-Alomar has no ties to Bennington County and his only reason to visit was to sell drugs, officials said. They said he used juveniles to facilitate his illegal trafficking business.
There has been an ongoing pipeline in recent years connecting Springfield, Mass. drug dealers with Bennington.
Law enforcement developed evidence that Alonso-Alomar was known to carry a firearm when in Vermont for his drug business, according to court records.
Alonso-Alomar would stay at homes of local drug users who he provided with controlled substances in exchange for lodging and a site to facilitate his drug distribution, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Turner said in court papers.
An informant reported Alonso-Alomar used a Facebook account to facilitate his drug trafficking, according to an affidavit filed by a Bennington County deputy sheriff assigned to the Vermont Drug Task Force.
The two charged felony drug sales were facilitated by Jessica Harrington of 222 Union Street in Bennington, court records show. Harrington is known by the drug task force as a user and dealer of controlled substances with a history of housing out-of-state drug dealers in Vermont, the deputy’s affidavit noted.
After setting up a $180 crack cocaine buy for Nov. 11 with Alonso-Alomar, the informant was told to meet with Harrington near her home, records show. The informant was monitored by law enforcement during the sale, records show
Another $180 drug sale on Dec. 12 was set up with Alonso-Alomar through the Facebook account the night before the deal, the deputy wrote. The informant went to the house and met with Alonso-Alomar to complete the deal, court records show.
The investigation continued and during a Jan. 15 search of an undisclosed residence police seized more than 200 grams (7 ounces) of crack cocaine, records show. Police detained a juvenile.
The drug task force said it subsequently learned that Alonso-Alomar and the juvenile had been arrested in August 2024 in Springfield, Mass.
During the search one of the persons in the home began getting death threats through the Facebook account that was used to set up drug deals with Alonso-Alomar, records show.
There was a belief that people at the residence being searched had helped set up the juvenile, known as “J.M.,” records show. One message said, “When I get up there ya all dying” and another noted, “Couldn’t even trust ya.”
A federal magistrate judge in Massachusetts on Feb. 14 ordered Alonso-Alomar detained following his initial arrest on a federal warrant issued in the Vermont case.
After his transfer from Massachusetts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont had asked this week for the federal court in Burlington to continue to detain Alonso-Alomar as a danger to the community. Federal Magistrate Kevin Doyle rejected the request. Doyle set strict conditions, including a nightly curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. at his home.
Doyle also agreed to set a probable cause hearing for March 21. Alonso-Alomar will lose that hearing if a federal grand jury indicts him in the interim.
