One of two men who kidnapped a Public Storage warehouse manager at gunpoint in 2017, mistakenly thinking the manager had stolen their stash of nearly 500 pounds of marijuana, was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones issued the sentence for Trent Lamar Knight, 31, after he pleaded guilty in May to distributing marijuana and using a firearm in the course of drug trafficking.
The judge decided to issue a shorter sentence than he gave Knight’s co-defendant, Jody Tremayne Wafer earlier this month, noting that Wafer was the ringleader and Knight played a lesser role. Wafer was sentenced to seven years in prison.
“You got into this way over your head,” the judge told Knight.
Knight and Wafer, both of Houston, were led to believe that their marijuana had been stolen when it actually had been seized in a secret raid by federal agents. Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration had seized the marijuana but made the confiscation look like a burglary, using what’s called a delayed-notice search warrant, according to court documents and testimony.
After they were informed someone had broken into their Public Storage locker in Southeast Portland and cleared it out, Wafer and Knight forced the on-site manager into an empty unit and held him at gunpoint on Dec. 2, 2017, demanding to know what happened to the drugs, according to court testimony and records.
Knight bound the manager’s wrists with duct tape and was captured on cellphone video telling the manager “it wasn’t worth his life and he should tell them where the marijuana was,” according to prosecutors.
Knight’s defense lawyer Edie Rogoway argued that Knight was acting at the direction of Wafer, and urged the manager to cooperate with the hope of preventing Wafer from doing more harm.
Knight, 31, was sentenced to five years in federal prison for using a gun in the course of drug-trafficking and distributing marijuana.
Knight told the judge he thinks daily about what he did to the storage manager. “From the bottom of my heart, I want to apologize for what I’ve done to him,” he said. “I know what I did was wrong…I completely hold myself accountable.”
Federal agents were investigating Knight and Wafer as part of a months-long surveillance and broader investigation into black market trafficking of marijuana from Oregon to Texas, according to court documents.
Knight, Wafer and other co-defendants were accused of buying large supplies of marijuana in Oregon and smuggling the bundles back to Texas for distribution, according to prosecutors.
— Maxine Bernstein
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