An Ohio drug dealer who bolted from police after a buy-bust in Monroeville, damaged several police cars and then jumped off a cliff, landing on his face, was sentenced Wednesday to more than seven years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer imposed a term of 87 months on Oshay Love, 31, of Akron, who was indicted in Pittsburgh in 2019 on charges of trafficking in carfentanil, which is 100 times more potent than fentanyl.
Love had been the target of the state attorney general’s office and local police after an informant told them he was buying from Love, whom he knew as “Black.”
The informant provided Love’s phone number, and police set up an undercover buy for July 23, 2019, in Monroeville. Love drove there from Akron for the deal, and police from Monroeville, Elizabeth and Wilkinsburg, along with AG’s agents, converged on his Chevy Blazer in the parking lot of the Monroeville Hampton Inn.
Love sped off and smashed into several police cars before officers stopped and apprehended him.
But he wasn’t done. Police cuffed him and started searching his vehicle, but Love broke free and ran, ultimately jumping from a 30-foot cliff near the parking lot and landing on his face, prosecutors said.
At the hospital he provided his identification. Officers at the scene, meanwhile, seized a large bag of carfentanil from the floor of the Blazer, along with two cellphones and $743 in cash.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Stockey said Love, a repeat criminal, needs a serious sentence to keep his life of drug-dealing from escalating further. He’s been in trouble since age 18 and over time has been distributing increasingly dangerous drugs, she said. He started with marijuana and then progressed to heroin, fentanyl and now carfentanil, a small amount of which can be lethal.
“This is not Mr. Love’s first rodeo,” Stockey said in a sentencing memo.
Love’s Akron lawyer, Thomas Bauer, said his client wants to turn his life around and be there for his 7-year-old daughter. For his part, Love told the judge he’s “extremely remorseful.”
But Stockey said there’s no evidence that’s true.
She said that while he did accept responsibility for his crime by pleading guilty, his criminal history shows his “continued and undeterred pattern of criminal behavior that endangers our community.”
Judge Fischer also ordered Love to be on probation for four years.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
