BURLINGTON – A Connecticut man awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to a state murder charge in the killing of a Derby woman more than two years ago was ordered Monday to serve a little more than 13 years in prison on federal drug offenses.
Judge William K. Sessions III handed down the 157 month prison sentence to 26-year–old Jakiy Tramaine Corey Keith during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Burlington. Keith had earlier pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and fentanyl as well as a separate count of carrying and using a firearm in a drug-related crime.
The judge described Keith as the leader of a drug dealing operation that controlled the flow of illegal narcotics into northern Vermont’s Orleans County for more than a year.
“This defendant was in charge of this particular location,” Sessions said in imposing the sentence of 13 years and one month in prison for Keith.
Keith faces another sentencing hearing later this year on a second-degree murder in state court in Orleans County in the death of 29-year-old Kayla Wright of Derby after police said he shot her multiple times early in the morning on Feb. 2, 2024, inside a home on Route 100 in Troy.
Keith had initially been charged with first-degree murder, but in February pleaded guilty to the reduced second-degree murder count as well as a count of unauthorized removal of a body as part of a plea deal with state prosecutors.
The plea agreement in that case allows Keith’s attorney and the prosecutor to argue for any sentence allowed by law. The charge of second-degree murder alone carries a prison term of 20 years to life in prison.
According to charging documents in the murder case, the shooting at the residence in Troy in February 2024 stemmed from drug trafficking taking place there and around Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Keith, the documents stated, feared that Wright was going to report his illegal activities to police.
Several other people involved in the drug dealing operation have also been arrested and charged with illegal narcotics and firearms offenses in federal court in Vermont.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Lasher, a federal prosecutor, said Monday in court that it was Keith, of Hartford, Connecticut, who traveled up to Vermont and served as the “manager” of the group’s illegal drug trade in Orleans County.
Lasher said Keith helped spread an atmosphere of “terror” through his drug dealing.
Attorney Chandler Matson, representing Keith, had asked the judge to impose a prison sentence for his client that was about two years shorter than the one handed down.
Matson said Keith had suffered from a great deal of trauma growing up, that included him being the victim of violence himself.
“He does not want to use his past to define him, but he is beginning to understand how it shaped him,” Matson wrote of Keith in a sentencing document filed ahead of Monday’s hearing.
“He has expressed a desire to be something different, to use his time in custody productively, to engage with therapy despite the pain of confronting his past, and to build a life that reflects who he actually is rather than who his environment trained him to be,” Matson added.
Keith, who wore gray sweatpants and a black sweatshirt emblazoned with the word “Ruthless” across its back, spoke briefly during Monday’s hearing, telling the judge he was sorry for his actions.
“I would like to apologize,” Keith told Sessions, adding that he was working to “better myself.”
