A local Harrisburg man, now on the run from the law, will spend 7-14 years in state prison for illegally possessing a firearm. The only question left to be answered is when that sentence will start.

According to the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office, Dauphin County Judge Richard A. Lewis sentenced Dwayne H. Yates, 37 of Harrisburg, to 84-168 months in state prison this morning following his conviction for illegally possessing a firearm. A Dauphin County jury found Yates guilty this past Thursday, December 9, 2021, of possession of a firearm prohibited, graded as a first-degree felony. Yates, who was represented by counsel, knowingly failed to appear for trial, texting his attorney moments before opening statements that he was not going to appear. The trial commenced in his absence, and the jury returned a guilty verdict after 30 minutes of deliberation.

Yates also failed to appear for his sentencing, which Judge Lewis had scheduled for this morning. Judge Lewis ordered that the sentence begin upon the apprehension of Mr. Yates, who is now a fugitive from justice.

“The evidence against Yates was overwhelming,” said Dauphin County Deputy District Attorney Ryan P. Shovlin, who prosecuted the case for the Commonwealth. Yates is prohibited from possessing a firearm under state law because he was convicted of several felony drug offenses in 2013 and of Escape in 2005.

The evidence at trial showed that on the morning of January 30, 2020, Yates physically assaulted his ex-girlfriend in the Hoverter Homes housing community in Harrisburg, cutting his hand when he smashed the window of her residence. After the ex-girlfriend called 911, Yates, whose hand was bleeding, ran to a neighbor’s house, leaving a trail of blood behind him. Harrisburg Bureau of Police officers responded within minutes and surrounded the neighbor’s house until Yates came outside. While placing Yates into custody, the officers found a single round of 9mm ammunition in Yates’s front left pocket.

Officers followed the blood trail inside the neighbor’s house to the 2^nd floor bathroom, where they saw fresh blood in the toilet bowl and that the toilet tank’s lid was on backwards. When they looked inside the toilet tank, they found a fully-loaded 9mm handgun with a scratched off serial number submerged in the tank, along with a fully-loaded spare magazine.

During closing argument, Shovlin noted that the ammunition in the handgun and magazine was the exact same brand and caliber as the round that officers found in Yates’s pocket. Shovlin also highlighted the fact that the blood in the toilet bowl and throughout the neighbor’s house contained Yates’s DNA.

But the evidence against Yates did not end there, Shovlin explained. A firearms expert with the Pennsylvania State Police obtained the serial number on the handgun, despite its obliteration, using specialized chemical etching techniques. Detectives with the Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office then traced the serial number on the handgun, finding that it had been bought the day before the January 30, 2020 incident by a Lebanon County man who knew Yates. That man testified at trial, admitting that he bought the gun from a local gun store while Yates was with him, and that he then gave the gun to Yates in exchange for $500. “You were both at the gun store. Why didn’t he just buy the gun himself?” Shovlin asked the Lebanon County man during trial. “Because he had a record and I didn’t,” the man responded.

Shovlin thanked the Harrisburg Bureau of Police, specifically Corporal Brandon Braughler and Officer Cynthia Kreiser for their exceptional policework, as well as Detective John O’Connor of the Criminal Investigations Division of the District Attorney’s Office for his follow-up investigation of the straw-purchaser who sold Yates the gun. The Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office asks anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Dwayne Yates to contact the Sheriff’s Office at 717-780-6590 or submit an anonymous tip on the District Attorney’s website, https://dauphin.crimewatchpa.com/da/contact.