A medical-marijuana provider with a previous conviction for murder was sentenced to nearly 10 years in federal prison Tuesday after pleading guilty to shooting off guns from a car.
Stylios Alton Trachanas, formerly of Longmont, plus a drug-possession charge. Trachanas, who cannot possess a firearm because of his previous conviction, was indicted in October.
Authorities began investigating Trachanas in April 2011, after residents in the Vermillion Road area in Boulder County reported seeing somebody shooting from a car, according to his plea agreement. A resident got a license plate number, which detectives followed back to Trachanas’ house.
After obtaining a warrant, authorities found multiple guns, including a , a revolver 12-gauge shotgun listed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as a destructive device . They also found the two handguns Trachanas admitted in his plea deal to shooting from the car.
Authorities also found about 50 marijuana plants growing in Trachanas’s house. Trachanas had paperwork showing that he was the registered caregiver — a personalized medical-marijuana provider — to nine patients. Current Colorado law limits caregivers to serving unless they get special approval for more.
“The defendant, a convicted felon, endangered his family and his community by illegally possessing an extremely dangerous weapon, and by operating an illegal marijuana grow in a small, enclosed space,” Colorado U.S. Attorney John Walsh said Tuesday in a statement.
Trachanas was convicted in Texas in 1992 for first-degree murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison, according to court filings in his federal case. Trachanas argued the shooting, which took place in 1988, was in self-defense, according to a filing.
In the same filing, Trachanas’ lawyer says his client thought he was able to possess firearms, despite his murder conviction. His attorney says Trachanas was supporting his wife and two young children by his medical-marijuana caregiver work.
U.S. District
Judge Brooke Jackson sentenced Trachanas to 110 months in prison, followed by six years of supervised release.
