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Five time felon just released from federal prison sentence for illegal possession of a handgun
By Michael Donoghue, Vermont News First
A five-time felon, who just got out of federal prison for illegal possession of a handgun in Burlington, has been ordered to appear in state court on charges of reckless endangerment and illegal possession of a firearm following a shooting in Burlington’s Old North End on Monday night, officials said.
Nathan Washington Jr., 46, who has lived mostly in the Philadelphia area, was sentenced to 28 months in federal prison after he was caught in 2023 as a convicted felon with a stolen loaded 9-mm handgun in Burlington City Hall Park, records show. He was given credit for nearly 16 months in pre-trial detention.
Federal Judge Christina Reiss ordered Washington, also known as Marcpose Payne, to be on three years of supervised release conditions once he was discharged from prison to ensure a smooth re-entry into society. He is being monitored by the U.S. Probation Office on Elmwood Avenue.
Burlington Police said city officers responded to the area of North Winooski Avenue and Grant Street for multiple reports of gunshots about 9:36 p.m. Monday. Witnesses described several people of interest running from the scene, Interim Police Chief Shawn Burke said.
As officers arrived at the scene, they located and detained three people of interest.
Shelly Sanders, 42, of Burlington also was arrested and lodged at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town for an unrelated arrest warrant.
There was no word on the third person.
Burke said city police collected ballistic and firearm evidence from the scene.
The chief said the shooting was believed an isolated incident between specific individuals who knew each other.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact Detective Erica Schaller at eschaller@bpdvt.org or (802) 540-2282.
Washington is well known to Burlington Police. He had at least four felony convictions in Pennsylvania before coming to Vermont and getting convicted last year for illegal possession of a firearm.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported Washington stuck a finger into the eye of a woman and caused it to bleed on Aug. 22, 2023. As Burlington Police officers approached him Washington refused to stop, ATF Special Agent Brian Wood reported at the time. Washington had to be physically detained.
Officer Brady McGee observed a pistol in an over-the-shoulder bag worn by Washington, police said. McGee was able to seize the Beretta 9-mm caliber semiautomatic pistol that had one round in the chamber and 13 loaded in the magazine, Wood reported.
Washington was initially arrested on state charges of simple assault, resisting arrest and being a felon in possession of a firearm and was released on conditions.
Federal officials were asked to take over the gun case to allow for stiffer prosecution and the state charges were dropped.
Washington was found by Esox bar on Main Street in October 2023 and arrested on the federal charge. During an interview he told the ATF that the gun he possessed in August had been in a bag that he stole from a woman that frequented Burlington City Hall Park.
Washington said he believed the woman had stolen the gun earlier and investigation revealed the handgun had been reported missing from a car of a South Burlington man in May 2023, the ATF said.
He also admitted to possession of both cocaine and Percocet when he was arrested on the federal gun charge, police said.
ATF Special Agent Eric Brimo, a firearms expert, determined the gun had not been manufactured in Vermont and had crossed state lines, making it a federal offense, records show.
Washington has an extensive criminal history. It shows in part, he received a 6-to-10-year sentence in February 1998 for robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery; one-to-two years in December 2010 for contraband; 30-to-60 months in July 2011 for aggravated assault by vehicle while driving while intoxicated
and 18-to-36 months also in July 2011 for an accident involving death or injury, records show.
After the ATF arrested Washington on the gun charge, Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Doyle ordered him detained due to the weight of the evidence, his prior criminal history, his history of violence and weapons, lack of stable employment, history of alcohol or substance abuse and prior violations of probation, parole or supervised release, court records show.
Washington eventually pleaded guilty to the single felony gun charge on Oct. 7, 2024.
The federal sentencing guidelines, which are advisory, had proposed a penalty between 30 and 37 months in prison.
“Rather than using his periods of incarceration and supervision – and the services offered to him – to reform his life, actions and outlook, the defendant appears to have continued his ongoing criminal actions,” Assistant U.S. Thomas J. Aliberti said in his sentencing memo.
He said 30 months was a proper sentence.
Defense lawyer Chandler Matson had countered that 24 months was a proper sentence in the case.
Reiss took the middle road and ordered 28 months.
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Categories: Burlington, Crime
It seems the program of rehabilitation is not working, seems that our crime is being imported from other state on a regular basis, why would this be happening?
If someone is not employed, how do they eat? How do they find a place to live in Vermont? How can they afford the “luxuries” of weed, drugs and alcohol?
In the grand scheme of things, how has restorative justice been serving this gentleman and the community? Has he been restored? Has the community been restored? Is restorative just a fancy word for we just let the criminals run wild in Vermont?
Where is the restoration? Do criminals move to areas the have “restorative justice”?
Bingo, criminals move to some areas for criminal leniency in the same way that they move for more lavish welfare benefits, and the word is out about how accommodating Vermont is in both of those aspects. The result is overburdened taxpayers and more crime victims. “Restorative justice” is one of those progressive buzzwords, much like the word “progressive” is. We should all beam with pride whenever we pay our taxes or return to our car and find a window smashed.
So called restorative justice means lessoning the consequences for some people based on marxist concepts regarding “historically marginalized people”at the expense of public safety for everyone. It is destructive, divisive, dangerous and sinful judicial virtue signaling designed to create chaos to ultimately overthrow western society.
You wanna know what’s highly interesting?? The largest “historically marginalized” group of persons since the beginning of time has been females.
Since the beginnings of recorded history, women have routinely been allowed to be beaten into submission, been the primary target of domestic violence, denied custody of their own offspring, property rights, divorces, and education. They weren’t allowed the right to vote until the last century, (and behind those of black males). They’ve been denied equal wages for the same jobs and suffered egregious forms of harassment in workplaces and in public, etc.
Yet women, over time and continuing through to present day, are far less likely to be the perpetrators of violent & sexual crime compared to their male counterparts. According to stats, males commit 98% of all sexual crimes, over 80% of all violent crime, and are involved in over 90% of drug-related crimes.
Bearing this large demographic in mind, how does one then even begin to justify that violent criminals must be allowed pass after pass regardless of how that impacts public safety, simply because one group or another were “marginalized” at some point within history? Apparently, being a member of an ethnic group or demographic that once suffered societal/cultural grievous circumstances does not necessarily correlate to such subset automatically being inclined to transgress. Therefore, equal application of the law must be allocated.
Virtually every demographic worldwide has been discriminated against or worse throughout the eras in one degree or another. One need merely study varying groups now in countries in Africa, China, India, and the Middle East to witness the atrocities that women, Christians, and Turkic Muslims face still today, yet violence begets only violence and allowing villainous persons to not face the consequences of their own free will and jeopardize the safety & well-being of innocents at large, is a nonsolution that creates utter anarchy.
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When police, in their normal pursuit of detecting crime pay more attention to men than women, we dont cry sexism, but when solid statistics clearly point to some demographics as being disproportionately involved in violent crime or terrorism, accusations of racist, islamophobic and xenophobic profiling echo from the hills. Liberals love to wag their bony fingers of indignation anytime they can accuse someone of being anti-science, but to them the solid, mature science of statistical analysis is somehow never valid when used to study human behavior because of uncomfortable truths that emerge.