Scranton man sentenced for gun crime

A Scranton man has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm, U.S. Attorney W. Walter Wilkins said in a press release issued Friday afternoon.

U.S. District Judge R. Bryan Harwell handed the sentence down to 29-year-old King Solomon McCrea Jr.

On April 11, 2007, Scranton police tried to stop McCrea’s car after he was spotted not wearing his seat belt. McCrea refused to stop, running several stop signs and eventually crashing into a Lake City police car. Officers located a loaded .380-caliber pistol under the driver’s seat of the car.

McCrea, who’s previously been convicted of burglary and failure to stop for a blue light, is prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rose Mary Parham of the Florence office prosecuted the case, which also was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as part of Project CeaseFire, an initiative of the U.S. Attorneys Office that seeks to aggressively prosecute gun-related crimes.