An Austell drug dealer who jumped bail and tried to run over a police officer was convicted Thursday of multiple crimes, authorities said.
Cobb County prosecutors said Rasheed Oran Jakes, 32, “made a series of bad decisions” that landed him in jail twice over the past two years. He was most recently arrested in March 2019 after skipping a court appearance in a drug trafficking case, according to Kimberly Isaza, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.
Jakes’ trouble with the law kicked off in November 2017, when a person was shot inside his apartment on Riverside Parkway, prosecutors said. Investigators became suspicious when Jakes left the injured person at a hospital.
When Cobb County police went to his apartment, they found more than 200 grams of methamphetamine and more than six ounces of marijuana, Isaza said.
He was subsequently arrested on charges of possession of drugs with intent to distribute. Things got worse for Jakes when he did not show up for an October 2018 hearing in the case, Isaza said.
Authorities did not catch up to him until months later, when on March 5, 2019, Cobb police officers patrolling Riverside Parkway tried to stop the vehicle Jakes was driving.
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“Jakes stopped his vehicle briefly, but as the officer approached, Jakes put his vehicle in gear and rammed the police vehicle, nearly striking the officer,” Isaza said in a news release. “Other officers soon immobilized his vehicle.”
During his arrest, prosecutors said police found more drugs and two handguns in the vehicle, leading to more charges against Jakes.
It took a Cobb County jury just 45 minutes to convict Jakes of the crimes Thursday, according to Isaza. He was sentenced to 30 years, with 25 years to serve in prison and the rest on probation.
The sentence includes five years to serve on the charge of fleeing and eluding police and for putting officers at risk, Isaza said.
It will be his second prison stint following a 2004 conviction for selling drugs out of Cobb County.
Assistant District Attorney Rachel Hines, who prosecuted the case, said Jakes is a danger to the community not only because of the quantity of drugs, but because of his continual disregard for the law.
During sentencing, Cobb Superior Court Chief Judge Reuben Green told Jakes he “put a lot of people at risk with your behavior.”
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