RICHMOND, Va. – A Virginia prison inmate has pleaded guilty to mailing threats to an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted him.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Rondale Latte Claud on Wednesday admitted that while he was an inmate at the Augusta Correctional Center on March 2, 2020, he wrote a letter to the prosecutor accusing him of turning his son and his family against him. He closed the letter by writing that if things get hard: “I will just go out the easy way which is killing myself ... and you,” the “statement of facts” filed in court said.
Recommended Videos
In a second letter, on April 14, 2020, Claud again threatened harm to the prosecutor - identified only as “P.O.” in court documents - saying he was affiliated with a gang that had members who could help him and that he knew where P.O. and his family lived.
Claud faces up to 10 years in federal prison. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 17.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Claud’s 2019 federal conviction stemmed from a 2018 incident outside a 7-Eleven store in Newport News in which he fired a handgun.
Court records show that Claud, 44, was prosecuted in 2019 in Newport News by Peter G. Osyf, an assistant U.S. attorney, for the unlawful possession of ammunition by a convicted felon and was sentenced to more than 17 years in federal prison.
When Claud was sentenced in 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement that Claud’s extensive criminal record in Virginia courts qualified him as an armed career criminal warranting the stiff federal term for possessing ammunition as a felon.