Trenton man arrested for possession of ‘assault rifle’
TRENTON >> Masiyah Howard, who beat a murder rap but was found guilty last year of a gun charge and just got out of the slammer a few months ago, was nabbed again by authorities on a gun charge.
Howard, 22, who was released from state prison in December, is accused of possessing an AR-15 assault rifle, the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
A smiling Howard, his pearly whites showing in his mug shot, was hooked and booked Thursday after cops pulled him over and detained him Thursday near Conrad and Division streets.
Detectives from the Mercer County Narcotics Task Force found Howard with three grams of pot. A SWAT team, armed with a warrant, searched his South Clinton home and discovered the assault rifle with an attached scope and 10 hollow-point bullets. prosecutors said.
Howard allegedly also had another scope for the highpowered weapon, along with a digital scale typically used to measure out drugs.
Howard, also known on the streets as “Chicken,” was tried in May of last year for the murder of Louis Bryan Alvarez. He was accused of shooting Alvarez in the chest in a dispute over a $20 Xbox video game in Chambersburg.
When Howard was 17 years old, he allegedly committed an armed robbery in Trenton on Feb. 11, 2013, and then allegedly gunned down Alvarez two weeks later in the city’s Chambersburg neighborhood on the night of Feb. 26, 2013.
Police arrested Howard on Feb. 28, 2013, in connection with the robbery and a few days later also charged him with murder and weapons offenses in connection with the Alvarez slaying.
The state ultimately decided to prosecute Howard as an adult in both the homicide and robbery cases.
The jury was deadlocked over whether Howard was responsible for the killing after his defense painted the case against him as circumstantial.
Prosecutors didn’t have surveillance tapes, eyewitness accounts or direct evidence linking Howard to the February 2013 murder of Alvarez, but prosecutors did have three cooperating witnesses — a trio of legally troubled Trenton gang members from the 793 Bloods set — who testified under oath that Howard had previously talked to them about being in jail for shooting someone.
The jury, however, found Howard guilty of unlawful possession of a weapon for which he was sentenced to three years in prison.
He also pleaded guilty in the unrelated robbery case to a charge of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and was hit with concurrent a 5-year prison stint.
The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office decided against retrying Howard and opted to dismiss the murder.
Howard, who had significant jail credits from when he was imprisoned leading up to trial, was released from Garden State Youth Correctional Facility after serving a little more than five months behind bars, according to state records.
In the new gun case, Howard faces numerous weapons offenses and possession of marijuana as prosecutors are seeking to have him detained until trial.