Wichitan on parole for having an AK-47 busted with assault weapon and heroin, feds say

A Wichita man who was on parole for having an AK-47 assault rifle has been busted with an AR-style assault weapon at his secret house, federal authorities say.

Dontreal Banks was charged Wednesday in U.S. District Court with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of heroin with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Banks, 33, was arrested after a Wichita police SWAT team and federal law enforcement officers raided a home in the 1700 block of West Anita on April 23.

An agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives detailed the allegations against Banks in a court document.

The agent wrote that when WPD and ATF officers went to the house with a search warrant, they found Banks in the kitchen and his girlfriend in the master bedroom. Banks had $405 in cash on his person.

In the bedroom, a 9mm cartridge was found on a nightstand. Inside a drawer, investigators found about 51.6 grams of heroin — an amount intended for distribution because it is too much for personal use, the ATF agent wrote. Banks’s wallet was inside the same drawer.

That amount of heroin would likely be worth more than $5,160, according to statistics reported by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation last year.

A Glock pistol was under the mattress, the ATF agent wrote. The assault weapon was in the closet: a loaded American Tactical Omni Hybrid firearm with two high-capacity magazines. A safe held ammunition and two empty gun boxes, neither of which matched the guns in the bedroom.

Investigators also searched the black Dodge Journey that Banks was seen driving before he got home. A loaded Glock magazine found in the dash under the radio matched the gun from under the mattress.

Wichita police have previously said a vehicle at the home is believed to have been involved in a shooting earlier this month.

Two videos obtained by law enforcement showed Banks with a gun that appeared to be the assault weapon, court documents state. One was a cellphone video from around June 26, and the other was a Ring home security video from around Sept. 18.

In an interview, the girlfriend told investigators that she bought the assault weapon after she and Banks found it online. She said they moved into the house in February, and that she did not use or have any drugs and that she did not have any additional guns.

As of Wednesday, the girlfriend had not been charged with any crimes in federal court.

A court petition listed seven alleged violations of Banks’s parole: committing a crime, drug possession, possessing a weapon, failing to notify the probation officer of a change in residence, using drugs, consuming alcohol and violating electronic monitoring procedures.

Officials wrote that he had used alcohol, methamphetamine and ecstasy, and that he had guns, ammunition, a scale, ecstasy and heroin. He twice violated his GPS monitoring by leaving the range of his monitoring beacon. The home in the 1700 block of West Anita is a secret, secondary residence when his residence reported to parole officers is in the 3000 block of South Millwood.

Banks has previously been convicted of robbery, criminal possession of a firearm, criminal discharge of a firearm and drug possession, police said. His federal parole stems from a case where he had a monitored phone conversation with an inmate at the state prison in Hutchinson in February 2015. While on the phone call, he said he never goes to a club without his “burner,” which is slang for a gun, according to his plea deal.

Banks was on parole at the time through the Kansas Department of Corrections, and investigators searched his home the same day as the call. They found a Norinco AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle with a loaded magazine in his closet.

He pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful possession of a firearm following a felony conviction and was sentenced in February 2016 to four years in prison and three years of supervised release. Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate records show Banks was released in November 2018.

This story was originally published April 29, 2020 at 10:38 PM.