From Niesha Lofing:
A Vallejo man will spend more than 11 years in federal prison after he offered to sell crystal meth to an informant and authorities found drugs and a pistol hidden his vehicle's airbag compartment.
David Michael Capenhurst, 26, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court in Sacramento to 11 years and three months in prison and five years of federal supervised release for his crimes, according to a news release by the office of U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown.
Capenhurst pled guilty to distributing methamphetamine in October.
According to prosecutors, Capenhurst admitted that he offered to sell a highly pure form of crystal methamphetamine to a confidential informant. Shortly after the drug deal was arranged, Vallejo police detectives stopped the man's car for a series of vehicle code violations and searched the vehicle.
They found a small amount of marijuana and $1,050 in the center compartment of the car, prosecutors said.
A police dog trained to find drugs alerted officers to additional narcotics. When detectives pried open an area designed to house an airbag on the passenger's side of the car, they found a hidden compartment containing 9 1/2 ounces of crystal meth in four separate plastic knotted bags, a digital scale and a loaded 9mm semi-automatic pistol that had been reported stolen, the release states.
The street value of the crystal meth was about $13,500, prosecutors said.
At the sentencing hearing Tuesday, Judge John A. Mendez said the sophistication of the drug trafficking and Capenhurst's validated street gang membership factored into the severe sentence, the release states.
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