FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, August 12, 2019
Former NBA Player Sebastian Telfair Sentenced to 3½ Years in Prison
For Possession of Loaded Gun
Defendant Arrested Following Traffic Stop in Brooklyn
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today announced that former National Basketball Association player Sebastian Telfair has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for gun possession. He was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon in April. Police recovered a loaded gun from his vehicle during a traffic stop in Prospect Heights in July 2017.
District Attorney Gonzalez said, “This defendant exercised his right to a jury trial and was found guilty of possessing an illegal firearm. The mandatory prison sentence he received today is required by law and he has now been held accountable for the unlawful conduct.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Sebastian Telfair, 33, of Orlando, Florida. He was sentenced today to three and a half years in prison by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice John Hecht. The defendant was convicted of one count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon in April following a jury trial.
The District Attorney said that, according to trial testimony, on June 11, 2017, at approximately 2:50 a.m., officers in an unmarked police car saw a Ford F-150 parked on a center median at Atlantic Avenue and Classon Avenue in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The pickup truck then made a U-turn off of the median, in front of the police and continued to drive down Atlantic Avenue without turning on its headlights. When officers approached to perform a traffic stop, the smell of marijuana was present, as was a lit marijuana cigarette in the car’s console, according to testimony.
Telfair was observed in the driver’s seat, and a second man was seated in the front passenger seat. Following the arrest, police conducted a search of the truck and recovered a loaded .45 caliber gun in the console.
The case was additionally investigated by Detective Investigators assigned to the Kings County District Attorney’s Office.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Alfred DeIngeniis, Chief of the District Attorney’s Violent Criminal Enterprises Bureau and Senior Assistant District Attorney James Slattery, also of VCE, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Patricia McNeill, Chief of the District Attorney’s Investigations Division.