Dargan

HOLLIDAYSBURG — A city man convicted in late November of sex and drug trafficking charges, including drug delivery resulting in death, is heading for another criminal jury trial in four joined cases that were separated from the trafficking case.

Donald Delanor Dargan, 63, appeared Monday in Blair County court alongside his court-appointed standby counsel Christopher Jancula for a sentencing hearing on the sex- and drug-trafficking charges.

President Judge Wade A. Kagarise, who presided over Dargan’s four-day trial, told Dargan that his evaluation by the state sexual offenders assessment board was not complete. He said Dargan could either be sentenced without the evaluation or have his sentencing postponed until it was ready.

Dargan chose to have his sentencing postponed. It was then scheduled for Feb. 24.

Following the conclusion of Dargan’s trial, he was found guilty of the drug overdose death of 38-year-old Colleen Buck, who was found dead in Dargan’s Sixth Avenue apartment on Jan. 22, 2021. Dargan was convicted of single felony counts of involuntary servitude – controlled substance, criminal conspiracy to commit involuntary servitude – controlled substance, indecent deviate sexual intercourse, sexual assault, human trafficking, corrupt organizations, possession with intent to deliver, two felony counts of rape and one misdemeanor count of recklessly endangering another person. He was acquitted of single felony counts of conspiracy to commit corrupt organizations and possession with intent to deliver drugs to Buck.

Dargan was also to be sentenced on a single felony count of possession of a firearm prohibited. Kagarise severed the charge in late October 2022, so it could be considered independently from Dargan’s drug and sex trafficking charges.

Following a brief recess, Kagarise asked Dargan, Jancula and Blair County District Attorney Pete Weeks the status of the four remaining drug cases against Dargan. The four cases were joined together for prosecution, then severed from the case involving the death of Buck, to be tried separately.

Weeks told Kagarise that Dargan rejected an offer of pleading guilty in the cases for a sentence that would run concurrent to the sentence handed down in Buck’s case. While the offer was for concurrency, Weeks said it wasn’t a coterminous offer, which means that, if Dargan were to be found guilty and sentenced after the next trial, his sentences would run at the same time but wouldn’t necessarily end at the same time if one sentence were longer than the other.

Dargan also opted for another trial by jury rather than a trial by court, Weeks said.

Kagarise then ordered jury selection be scheduled for the cases.

When asked by Kagarise if he would be continuing to represent himself in court, as he did in the Buck case, Dargan asked for an attorney to be appointed as his representation.

Across his four remaining cases, Dargan is facing four felony counts of possession with intent to deliver, two felony counts of conspiracy to commit possession with intent to deliver, three felony counts of criminal use of a communication facility and four misdemeanor counts of possession of a controlled substance.

Dargan’s co-defendants in the trafficking ring, Sean Lamont Atkins, 53, Derrick Anthony McNeal, 56, and Tony Donnell Ross, 48, have already been sentenced in their cases, while Quincy James Wilson, 48, is awaiting a resolution.

The charges were brought against the men after Altoona police became aware of a human-trafficking ring in the city in December 2020.

The ring would provide drugs to women in order to get them “strung out.” They would then cut the women off from their supply of drugs and, once they were desperate, police said the group would have the women prostitute themselves in order to obtain drugs.

Dargan has been incarcerated at the Blair County Prison since Jan. 3, 2022.