One of the dozens of people whose sentences were commuted by former president Barack Obama during his two terms in office was Damarlon C. Thomas, who had served eight years of a 19-year sentence for distributing cocaine.
On Monday, Thomas was brutally shot and killed in a halfway house in Saginaw, Michigan.
At approximately 9:40 p.m. on Monday night, two gunmen entered the federal halfway house Thomas was in and shot him in the head. “One person watched over a group of them while another subject located the victim and executed him,” said Michigan State Police Lt. David Kaiser. “They were looking for this person.”
Thomas was a former member of the Sunny Side Gang. He was convicted after “Operation Sunset” busted him and 38 others involved with the gang. His arrest was the biggest drug bust in the history of Saginaw. He was originally set to be released in 2027, but his sentence was commuted in November of 2016, along with 78 others.
What is not clear, however, is who shot the 31-year-old or why. It could have been gang members wanting him to keep quiet, which seems unlikely, or it could have been vigilantes upset that he was to be released. Police are still investigating what happened, but for now all they know is that two men came in and viciously executed Thomas.
