Daytona Beach man sentenced to life in prison for trafficking fentanyl, meth
A Daytona Beach man may have briefly been relieved when a jury found him not guilty Friday of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer with a firearm. Then a court clerk read the rest of the verdict.
Jurors found 33-year-old Carlos L. Barada guilty of all the other charges: armed trafficking in fentanyl 28 grams or greater; armed trafficking in methamphetamine 28 grams or more but less than 200 grams; resisting an officer without violence; possession of paraphernalia; and carrying a concealed firearm.
Circuit Judge Karen Foxman said that given Barada’s past criminal record involving guns and drugs, she felt he presented a danger to the community and sentenced him to life in prison on each of the two drug-trafficking charges. Barada also pleaded no contest after the trial to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
"I wish that you would have had hopefully a change of heart at any of the prior 12 felonies, but that did not happen," Foxman said.
And Barada is facing additional legal trouble in Polk County.
A Polk County grand jury indicted him and Justin Jenkins, 31, of South Daytona, on first-degree murder and other charges in the killing of 29-year-old Xavier Johnson of St. Petersburg, according to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.
The Daytona Beach case began Nov. 16, 2022, when police tried to stop a red Mercedes with dark-tinted windows. The car fled, and when officer Christopher Maher tracked it down, Barada ran from the vehicle.
Barada threw a bag of drugs onto the roof of a house as he ran from police, according to Assistant State Attorney Ashley Terwilleger. It turns out the bag included two separate bags of drugs: one with 163 grams of a mixture of fentanyl and xylazine and one with 189 grams of methamphetamine.
The officer caught up to Barada and took him to the ground. Maher accused him of trying to reach for a gun as the officer struggled to handcuff Barada while radioing for help.
Barada was arrested and police found a loaded 9 mm pistol in his pocket. Officers found an AK-47 assault rifle in the red Mercedes.
Terwilleger told jurors during her closing argument that they can hear Maher telling Barada to stop reaching for the gun.
She said that Maher was still stressed minutes later saying that he thought Barada was going to shoot him.
She said another officer tried to calm Maher by saying Barada wasn’t trying to shoot him.
“You have the testimony that Christopher Maher was in fear for his life,” Terwilleger said.
Terwilleger asked the judge to sentence Barada to life in prison.
"Obviously, the court is well aware of the epidemic in this country and particularly our community is facing when it comes to fentanyl and how dangerous fentanyl is," Terwilleger said.
Assistant Public Defenders Rachel Brothers and John Terhune represented Barada.
Terhune in his closing argument said that police told Barada not to reach into his waistband for the gun. But Terhune said the gun was in Barada’s pocket, so he was not reaching for it.
Terhune also said that the officer’s body camera only activated when the officer was already struggling with Barada, so jurors did not have the full story from the video.
In a press release, State Attorney R.J. Larizza stated: “This is an extremely dangerous individual. He traffics in fentanyl while armed with a firearm. He flees from law enforcement, and now he is on his way to Polk County to face murder charges. This scary individual will no longer be roaming our streets − he will die in our state prison system.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Daytona Beach man gets life for armed trafficking of fentanyl, meth
