ANTIGO — Friday afternoon at the Langlade County Courthouse, Judge John Rhode sentenced a local man convicted of several felonies related to drug dealing to four years of probation and 15 days in county jail.
Kevin Alloway, 40, who already had spent over 200 days in jail, received the sentence after pleading no contest to maintaining a drug trafficking place, several counts of methamphetamine possession, and threatening to injure or accuse someone of a crime.
Alloway pled no contest to the charges as part of an agreement he and his attorney Brian Braziel entered into with District Attorney Kelly Hays. The deal also entailed dismissing a number of felonies Alloway originally faced, including possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, manufacturing methamphetamine, possession of a firearm, obstructing an officer, and child neglect.
Hays alluded to previous time Alloway served in the early 2000s when explaining the agreement.
“Given the significant period of time between his prior offenses and the fact that the offenses here are primarily drug offenses that could be addressed with community supervision, I do not think that prison or straight to jail is appropriate,” Hays said.
She also argued that, due to the relatively large number of charges lodged against him in a short period of time, Alloway should also face several additional months in jail if he breaks any of the terms of his probation or reoffends.
“Clearly, he has rehabilitation issues that need to be addressed, and probation is an appropriate first step for that. If…he cannot get through four years of felony probation, which is a hard thing to do and will require work on his end, if he can’t do that, he will hear back from the court with a five month sentence hanging over his head, including potential prison time,” Hays said.
Brian Braziel, Alloway’s attorney, said most of the charges his client originally faced were dismissed because they could not be proven.
“Part of the reason this agreement is the way it is, your honor, is because of weaknesses in the state’s case,” Braziel said. “The court has seen the complaint. You’ve seen some of the most serious felonies gone by the wayside. Possession with intent deliver — gone. Possession of a firearm, a felony — gone. These claims that were held against him were not strong, and that’s why they’re not here. And your honor, if you have experience, you would know, the state doesn’t get rid of its strongest claims just to resolve the case. They get rid of their strongest claims when they may have an issue proving them.”
According to the criminal complaint, the first charges under consideration Friday were brought against Alloway around July 2020, when sheriff’s officers entered Alloway’s Town of Rolling house with a search warrant and found meth in several locations throughout the building. Five of his children apparently lived there at the time.
Several separate criminal complaints outline probable cause sheriff’s officers found to charge the 40-year-old with further crimes in the fall of 2022.
On Sept. 19 of that year, deputies from the Langlade County Sheriff’s Office entered Alloway’s home again with a search warrant, which was obtained after they received tips about illicit activities there from Crime Stoppers and a confidential informant. After no one answered the door, deputies kicked it open, and eventually found Alloway in a downstairs bathroom, where he had just flushed the toilet.
Tony Rootes and Amber Roehl, two other individuals that have been convicted on meth-related charges, were also found in a basement bathroom. Deputies found meth in an adjoining bedroom, as well as in several other locations throughout the residence. Alloway claimed he lived in Michigan, not at the residence, but his wife arrived at the home during the search and said he had not been living with her in Michigan. Alloway asked to say goodbye to her, though, and she then claimed that he did, in fact, reside with her in Michigan.
Several days later, sheriff’s deputies learned of threats Alloway was making against an individual he believed had informed on him. During a Sept. 22 phone call he made from behind bars to his wife, Alloway told her to text the witness, saying, “Tell him if he stops, I will, I will, I will back off.” He also told her to tell their son to call the individual. “I’ll leave him, his uncle, and everybody, have Ryan tell him I’ll leave him and his uncle alone…he NEEDS to retract some sn n n and stop. PERIOD.” Alloway’s wife admitted she and her son had contacted the witness following the phone call.
A deputy also learned that on Oct. 13, Alloway had attempted to discredit the witness by having him arrested for burglary. He stated to his wife, “Let’s help (law enforcement out) a little bit so I can get him in jail over here by me so I can help him out a little bit. I would rearrange his attitude.”
But Braziel suggested Alloway’s comments were not meant as legitimate threats and that the individual in question really was disreputable.
“This individual was less than a trustworthy character,” Braziel said. “Again, as I said, your honor, this individual has a history of committing thefts. They’re on a $100,000 cash bond in Marathon County. So when Kevin was seeing that his world was coming down all around him because this individual was at his house and pointing the finger at Kevin, saying that he was a drug dealer while he was living in Mass City with his wife, that gave Kevin a lot of trouble.”
Alloway will be allowed to serve his 15 days in jail any time within the next 60 days in any county jail in the state that agrees to board him.
Rhode reflected on his responsibility to discourage drug usage in the community with his ruling.
“Methamphetamine has been a huge problem in our community, and we’re not alone,” Rhode said. “I would say almost every community in the United States of America is significantly affected by either that substance or heroine or a combination thereof. We have been more in the last more than five years, had a bigger problem with methamphetamine. We had a death this week from an opiate overdose. And so illegal dangers, drugs are serious.
“When drugs get a toe-hold in our community, and they have, it gets more dangerous. It turns a lot of good people into doing bad things. They steal a lot. They steal because they need money for their drug habit. Our community’s very sick and tired of the drugs that exist here. Different people have different opinions of how to address it. I know it is a sickness. It is an illness. It’s not so much that drug addiction is a crime of evil intent. But it does bad things to the community.”
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