FirstAlerts

Felon Sentenced to Over Seven Years in Federal Prison for Possessing a Gun

A Freeport, Illinois man was sentenced to 92 months in federal prison for illegally possessing a firearm.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 28, 2026, 5:56 p.m. ET
Developing · not yet checked for updates

This case is not concluded. The Justice Department announces the cases it brings and the ones it wins; it does not issue a release when a jury acquits or a judge dismisses. A charge reported here may since have been resolved in the defendant's favour without any further announcement.

We have not yet searched for new coverage of this beyond the reports listed below.

A felon previously convicted of drug distribution charges was on August 28, 2026, to 92 months in federal prison for possessing a gun, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Iowa. Donta Racine Euells, 45, of Freeport, Illinois, pleaded guilty on January 12, 2026, to possession of a firearm as a felon. On August 9, 2025, Dubuque police responded to a 911 call in which victims reported that Euells, Davion Trawick (who has previously been ), and another man forced their way into a home. At the time, Trawick possessed a large capacity firearm and Euells possessed what was later determined to be a BB-gun. However, law enforcement officers found a gun in Euells' car that he had driven to the residence. Euells was prohibited from possessing firearms due to numerous prior felony convictions. He was in Cedar Rapids by U.S. District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams. Euells must serve a three-year term of supervised release after his prison term. There is no parole in the federal system. Euells is being held in U.S. Marshal's custody until he can be transported to a federal prison. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole L. Nagin and investigated by the Dubuque Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. This case is part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational organizations, and protect communities from violent crime.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 128 Aug 2026, 21:56current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.