Alleged Dorchester gang member charged with selling fentanyl, crack

The US Attorney's office in Boston today charged David Wood, 30, with possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute, after he allegedly sold fentanyl and crack to a "cooperating witness" three times over the past month.

Wood, who has a criminal record dating to when he was 12, is scheduled for arraignment tomorrow in US District Court in Boston, according to court records.

Wood sold fentanyl to the undercover buyer twice and, on Dec. 10, crack, in Dorchester, according to one of two affidavits filed by an FBI agent on the case.

Wood was described as a member of the Morse Street Gang in a separate affidavit, filed to seek a judge's permission to obtain location data from a telephone believed used by Wood. That affidavit added:

According to the BPD, the Morse Street Gang is one of the largest gangs in the city, with nearly 20 individuals believed to be actively associated with it. For many years, the Morse Street Gang has been involved in an ongoing dispute with a group from the area of Lucerne Street in Boston (as well as several other more sporadic disputes with other area groups) that has been one of the most active disputes in the city.

Wood is no stranger to the criminal-justice system.

In 2010, a federal judge sentenced him to five years in prison after he pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm, for an incident outside a Yawkey Way club in which BPD officers who initially stopped him for walking out of the club with an open bottle of Heineken found a loaded .25 Colt semiautomatic gun on him.

Then 22, Wood already had four prior convictions for violent crimes. These included a juvenile conviction for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in which he rammed a police vehicle during an escape attempt that included attacking an officer closing in on him severely enough to send the officer to the hospital, according to a sentencing memorandum in the 2010 case by federal prosecutors, who added another conviction came after he and other Morse Street members were arrested just as they were about to beat a food-delivery worker with a lead pipe.

Wood had also been been shot twice, once when he was 15 and again when he was 17, according to the government's sentencing memorandum, in which prosecutors had asked for a sentence just shy of ten years.

In the 2010 case, Wood's attorney asked for a sentence of no more than four years, in part due to a lack of a positive influence from his father:

Mr. Wood is now twenty two years old. He has three adult incarcerations in the House of Corrections. All of the sentences carried one-half time eligibility for parole. He maintains that he has no gang affiliation or substance abuse problem. His home life has been relatively stable but without influence from his father and apparently little encouragement to seek education. The government and Mr. Wood would be best served by a period of incarceration followed by supervised release with conditions mandating education and job training.

Innocent, etc.