Tower Suites co-owner to plead guilty to one count of US drug indictment
Tower Suites co- owner Shervington ‘ Big Head’ Lovell, who is facing a charge of conspiracy to violate US maritime drug enforcement law, has signalled his intention to plead guilty to one count of his indictment.
In a letter to judge Paul G. Gardephe, Lovell’s lawyer Eon R. Smith, signalled his client’s intentions to withdraw his previously entered plea of not guilty and to enter a plea of guilty to Count Seven of his indictment.
A change of plea hearing was set to take place remotely before Justice Gardephe but it is unclear as to whether this was done as there has been no electronic update to the court case.
Lovell was nabbed in 2018 following months of investigation and planning by the US Drug Enforcement Administration, which saw him meeting with confidential sources (CSs) in Georgetown and Jamaica to allegedly plan a cocaine shipment to the Netherlands.
It was following the interception of a cocaine-laden vessel, 350 miles off Diamond Valley, Barbados on July 27th, 2018 that a sealed US arrest warrant was issued for Lovell. He and his coconspirators were allegedly hoping to traffic the 624 kilogrammes of cocaine to the Netherlands via the Azores.
Lovell and Colombian Ricardo Ramirez were arrested along with a Surinamese national on October 25th, 2018, at the Norman Manley International Airport in Jamaica on drug trafficking charges.
According to the complaint filed against Lovell, on or about April and July 2018 in Guyana, Jamaica and Colombia on the high seas and elsewhere, he and others intentionally and knowingly combined, conspired, confederated, and agreed togeth
er and with each other to violate the maritime drug enforcement laws of the US. It further says they knowingly intended to use a vessel to distribute and possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance in violation of Title 46 of the United States Code Section 70503 (a) (1).
He was expected to go on trial earlier this year.