A Massachusetts man wanted for homicide and other violent crimes in southern New England pleaded guilty Friday to aggravated drug trafficking in Ellsworth.
As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, Ramon Smith was sentenced to serve five years in prison for dealing fentanyl and cocaine.
When Smith, 35, was arrested at an Ellsworth motel in October 2021, he was wanted on a homicide arrest warrant in Connecticut and on a strangulation arrest warrant in Massachusetts. Police had gotten a tip about Smith’s location and, after coordinating a response with the U.S. Marshals Service, arrested him at a room at the local Ramada Inn.
Smith was found with 116 grams of powdered cocaine, 76 grams of crack cocaine, 67 grams of fentanyl and nearly $5,000 in cash, police said. They also found a loaded .38 caliber High Point pistol in a backpack in the motel room, Assistant Attorney General Jacob Horn told Judge Terence Harrigan during a hearing in an Ellsworth courtroom.
The estimated value of the drugs seized from Smith was $23,000, Horn said.
The prosecutor said that while the sentence may seem lenient based solely on the Maine drug offenses, Smith will be handed over at some point to authorities in Connecticut and Massachusetts to face even more serious charges he faces in those states.
Smith has been held at Hancock County Jail in Ellsworth since his arrest. He will get credit for time served, which is more than two years, for his five-year sentence.
“This sentence is extraordinarily charitable,” Horn told the judge. “Connecticut wants to prosecute him for murder.”
According to a 2021 report by the MetroWest Daily News, Smith has been charged with shooting and killing someone he had known from prison in Hartford, Connecticut in 2007.
He also was wanted for two separate incidents that occurred in Massachusetts in 2021. In one, he was charged with strangulation, assault and battery, and vandalism. In the other he was charged with leading police on a car chase that resulted in injuries to four other people in another car, MetroWest Daily News reported.