Tacoma Resident Who Hid Guns & Heroin Sentenced To Over 10 Years In Prison
TACOMA, Wash. - Arnoldo Mendoza Ramos, 28, of Tacoma, Washington, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to 130 months in prison for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense. Mendoza Ramos is a Mexican national who will likely be deported following his prison term.
According to records filed in the case, on four occasions in September and October 2013, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bremerton Police Department purchased heroin from Mendoza-Ramos and his girlfriend, Ana L. Torres. The heroin sales were made at various parking lots in Tacoma and Lakewood, Washington. On October 24, 2013, agents and officers executed a search warrant at the couple’s Tacoma apartment and seized 2.4 pounds of heroin. Throughout the apartment, the couple had hidden heroin in areas such as inside the freezer door, in a can marked baby formula, inside a macaroni and cheese box and in a tub of beans. Additionally, inside an armrest of the couch agents and officers found two handguns and heroin packaged for sale. In the bedroom closet a shotgun was located that had been reported stolen in Port Orchard, Washington. More than $18,000 in cash, eleven cell phones and small amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine were also found inside the apartment.
Mendoza Ramos pleaded guilty in June 2014. Torres pleaded guilty in May 2014 and will be sentenced in October 2014.
The use of firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense carries a mandatory minimum additional consecutive five year sentence to the sentence imposed on the underlying drug offense.
