Baltimore, Maryland - Demetrius William Harris, a/k/a “Demetrius Diggs," age 34, of Baltimore, pleaded guilty on Aug. 15, 2018, to possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance. Diggs had five previous convictions for drug distribution or violent crimes.
The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur; Special Agent in Charge Rob Cekada of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Baltimore Field Division; and Interim Police Commissioner Gary Tuggle of the Baltimore Police Department.
According to his plea agreement, at 11 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2017, Baltimore Police officers in an unmarked vehicle saw Diggs driving a car with temporary Texas tags traveling at an extremely high rate of speed. The officers activated their vehicle’s emergency lights and sirens to initiate a traffic stop but Diggs sped away in an attempt to flee from police. Officers followed, but terminated their pursuit after Diggs drove his car across the median into a lane of oncoming traffic. Shortly thereafter, Diggs crashed his car head-on into another vehicle, then attempted to back up. Diggs’s car became stuck when he reversed it onto a grassy median between the lanes of traffic. As officers arrived on the scene, a man exited from the passenger side of Diggs’s car and ran away. Officers removed Diggs from the driver’s seat and took him into custody. Officers recovered two cell phones from Diggs. A search of Diggs’s vehicle recovered a black hat, black ski mask, and black trench coat on the floor next to the front passenger seat; two additional cell phones from the center console, as well as two clear plastic sandwich bags that held 49 clear gel capsules containing heroin. On the grass just outside the passenger side of Diggs’s vehicle, officers found two loaded firearms: a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and a 12-gauge shotgun. The pistol had been reported stolen from a home in Fayetteville, North Carolina on June 27, 2017.
According to court documents, the man who fled from Diggs’s car was located by police in a nearby neighborhood and subsequently identified as Percy Eugene Johnson, age 29, of Baltimore. Johnson pleaded guilty on July 24, 2018 to being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett has scheduled Johnson’s sentencing on Oct. 23, 2018, at 3:00 p.m.
Diggs and the government have agreed that if the Court accepts the plea agreement, Diggs will be sentenced to between eight and 10 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett has scheduled sentencing for Nov. 26, 2018 at 3:00 p.m.
This case is 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.
United States Attorney Robert K. Hur commended the ATF and the Baltimore Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Hur thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeffrey J. Izant and Patricia C. McLane, who are prosecuting the case.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
