Dual U.S.-Jamaican citizen convicted of murder-for-hire and cocaine trafficking in Virginia

A federal jury in Norfolk convicted Antwan Denetrick Hue, 42, on murder-for-hire and drug trafficking charges linked to a Caribbean cocaine network.

Norfolk jury finds Hue guilty of ordering killing to escape child support

A federal jury in Norfolk, Virginia convicted Antwan Denetrick Hue, 42, a dual U.S.-Jamaican citizen, on four counts: conspiracy to commit murder for hire, murder for hire, murder while engaged in drug trafficking, and conspiracy to manufacture and distribute cocaine, vannuysnewspress.com reports. U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen accepted the verdict.

According to court records and evidence presented at trial, Hue led an international drug trafficking organisation between 2015 and 2019. Working alongside Regina Sade Chen, also known as Erica Williams, 36, he imported multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine into the United States from the Caribbean, including Jamaica. The pair employed transporters — among them co-defendants Kayla Bedessie, 34, and Deshawn Hassan Mercer, 33 — to smuggle cocaine into the country and move money out. Hue regularly travelled between the United States, Jamaica, and other Caribbean nations to meet co-conspirators and supervise the operation.

The murder charge stems from a passport dispute. When Hue applied to renew his expiring U.S. passport in 2016, authorities informed him he was ineligible because he was in arrears on child support payments owed to the mother of his minor child. Believing her death would permanently end those payments and clear the way for passport renewal, Hue hired Mercer and co-defendant Zquan Leon Steeps, 32, to kill her in November 2016.

On 4 December 2016, Mercer, Steeps, and Denasha Campbell — now deceased — travelled to the victim's home in Norfolk. Campbell knocked on the door and asked to use the victim's phone; Mercer and Steeps then forced their way inside and shot and killed the woman in front of her nine-year-old child. The three fled, leaving the child to call 911.

Hue's calculation proved wrong. After learning that child support obligations survive the death of a parent, he negotiated on 24 December 2016 with the victim's mother, agreeing that she would assume full custody of his son in exchange for being released from further child support payments.

On 22 October 2018, Hue applied for and obtained a U.S. passport renewal, citing an urgent need to travel to Montego Bay, Jamaica. In August 2019, Department of Homeland Security agents arrested him in Florida as he attempted to take possession of a kilogram of cocaine.

Hue faces a mandatory life sentence when he is sentenced on 4 March 2027. A federal district court judge will determine the exact sentence after applying the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Several co-defendants have already resolved their cases. Chen pleaded guilty on 29 August 2024 to cocaine distribution conspiracy and faces a mandatory minimum of ten years up to life in prison. Bedessie pleaded guilty to the same charge on the same date and was sentenced on 8 September 2025 to 70 months in prison. Mercer and Steeps pleaded guilty in October 2024 to conspiracy to commit murder for hire; both face a mandatory minimum of life in prison.

The prosecution was announced by Theophani K. Stamos, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Ian Kaufmann, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Richmond Field Office; and Kai Wah Chan, Acting Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Washington, D.C. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph E. DePadilla and Brian J. Samuels are prosecuting the case.

The investigation forms part of the Homeland Security Task Force initiative, a multi-agency effort directed at dismantling criminal cartels, transnational criminal organisations, and human smuggling networks operating inside and outside the United States. The task force in Washington, D.C. draws personnel from the FBI, HSI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and several other federal agencies, with prosecution led by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Court documents are available through the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia or on PACER under Case No. 2:24-cr-38.

Source: Google News JM — Crime