ONLY ON CVP: In a deal that spares his girlfriend prison, the last known leader of what once was the notorious James Bond Gang pleaded guilty to drug and weapons offenses that will add four years to time he’s already serving behind bars.
Akeem Boone will be sentenced on March 28, provided the plea deal that prosecutors worked out with his girlfriend, Blair N. Steeley, is approved, as expected, this coming Tuesday.
The two also might be done as a couple.
While waiting for the proceedings to begin in Hackensack on Wednesday, Steeley told Boone’s lawyer that she’s through with him. It’s “been too much,” she said.
Akeem “Light” Boone in court Wednesday (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
“Light” Boone, as he is known, is already serving a four-year sentence without parole for his role in the theft of a safe that police found crew members trying to crack open in an Englewood garage.
As part of a plea deal that led to that sentence, Boone agreed not to testify on behalf of his three co-defendants — Marc Rainey, Renando Sheffield, and Jerelle Bordeaux — who were all convicted last July for their roles in the October 2012 theft.
A month before the arrests, police found 20 grams of crack cocaine and a loaded .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun reported stolen from a North Carolina sporting good shop in May 1999 in the Hackensack apartment that Boone shared with Steeley.
Steeley was home with their child when police busted in. Boone wasn’t.
A multi-jurisdictional task force that stretched from Morris County to Connecticut was looking for him when they raided a William Street garage near the King Gardens apartment complex and arrested Boone and several others in connection with the safe heist.
Steeley will be sentenced to probation for her part in the drug and weapons offenses.
Boone, meanwhile, will get eight years total — three of which will run along with his current sentence and four that he must serve. He won’t be eligible for parole until 2021 as a result.
Prosecutors pushed for the agreement in exchange for Steeley’s probation. Boone took the deal, admitting on Wednesday that he kept the illegal gun in the apartment without an identification car or permit — and in violation of laws that prohibit felons from having firearms.
Boone also told the judge that he’d planned to sell the cocaine that was found.
It marks the end, for now, of what has been an ongoing criminal career for 29-year-old Akeem Lamont Boone.
Several years ago he was shot in the arm in Washington Heights. He was nearly hit again in March 2003 when a gunman came up to a car that Boone was sitting in at the Rock Creek Terrace apartments in Englewood and began shooting.
The driver survived bullets in the head and neck. Boone – who wasn’t struck — was arrested for carrying crack.
Boone was sent to state prison for two years in 2007 after he and his brother, Aasim “Sean” Boone, were caught using kids as young as 13 to peddle drugs while selling semi-automatic weapons and illegal ammunition on the street. Operating from the Parkview Terrace apartments in Englewood, the Boones stretched their business into Bergenfield, Tenafly and elsewhere.
Out of prison barely two years, Boone and his brother were in custody again, along with former pro basketball bust Sean Banks, following a 2011 high-speed chase in Sussex County that ended when their SUV flipped.
The quartet had $20,000 in jewelry and other booty with them from burglarized homes in Sparta and Jefferson Township, authorities said.
Sentencing in that case is set for next week.
Authorities have associated the Boones and other defendants with the Bond Gang, founded more than 25 years ago by a quartet of burglars who hit luxury homes in New Jersey, New York and along the East Coast.
Law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of their behavior said the more current group was looser-knit, among other major differences.
Unlike their predecessors, the newer crew didn’t use gadgetry. But the M.O. was the same: Case a neighborhood in a high-end car that won’t attract attention, bust through the front door, disable the alarm system, head straight to master bedroom and bolt with whatever cash and jewelry they can find before police have a chance to get there.
RELATED STORIES: Akeem Boone, career criminal
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter