Boston Man Sentenced to 27 Months for Illegally Possessing Firearms

Portland, Maine: United States Attorney Halsey B. Frank announced that Dane Mitchell, 26, of Boston, Massachusetts, was sentenced today in U.S. District Court by Judge D. Brock Hornby, to 27 months in prison and three years of supervised release for being a felon in possession of firearms.  Mitchell pled guilty on August 30, 2017.

According to court records, on April 8, 2017, Mitchell and another individual travelled to a Gray, Maine, where they rented firearms, purchased ammunition, and fired the weapons at a shooting range.  Boston Police Department officers identified Mitchell and the shooting range from videos that were uploaded to Snapchat.  Mitchell was prohibited from possessing firearms as the result of his 2016 Massachusetts felony convictions for possessing a firearm without a permit and possessing a firearm with a defaced serial number.

The case was investigated jointly by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Boston Police Department’s Youth Violence Strike Force and prosecuted as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. Attorney General Jeff Sessions reinvigorated PSN in 2017 as part of the Department’s renewed focus on targeting violent criminals, directing all U.S. Attorney’s Offices to work in partnership with federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement and the local community to develop effective, locally-based strategies to reduce violent crime.