BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - A New Haven woman has pleaded guilty to lying to a grand jury about the events that led up to the killings of three people in 2015.
Laquasia Samms, 26, faces a possible five years in prison when she is sentenced in December. She pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport to making false statements to a grand jury.
Prosecutors said Samms was in the room during a gun deal when a man left her apartment with weapons he had not paid for.
Prosecutors allege that the owner of the guns kidnapped and later killed two other people who were in the apartment. Damian Connor and Tamar Lawrence were shot in Hamden. A third man, Devante Williams, was shot later in New Haven, prosecutors said.
Samms appeared before a grand jury in New Haven in 2019. During her testimony, she repeatedly claimed that she did not remember sending text messages related to the gun transaction, the kidnapping, or the killings of the three individuals.
In pleading guilty, Samms admitted that she sent the text messages in question, and that she withheld other information that was sought by the federal grand jury.
On December 9, 2019, the grand jury returned an indictment charging Edward Parks, 34, of Raleigh, North Carolina, with kidnapping and murdering Connor and Lawrence, and killing Williams in New Haven to stop him from telling law enforcement what had occurred.
Parks is currently in prison awaiting trial.
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