OAKLAND — An Alameda man was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison for a gun that police found while investigating him for suspected human trafficking.
Adesola Kehinde, 38, was being investigated last year on suspicion of trafficking a teen girl, while on probation for a prior human trafficking of a minor conviction. But instead of facing sex trafficking charges, Kehinde was charged instead in federal court with being a felon in possession of a firearm, court records show.
He ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced Monday by U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín.
In a sentencing memo, his lawyer said that Kehinde’s life was never the same after he was shot in the pelvis at a bowling alley in 2006. At the time, he was a community college student with a passion for football. After the shooting, he lost the ability to play and has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since, the memo says.
In a letter to the court, Kehinde wrote that he has reflected on his life while in jail, taken advantage of self-help programs behind bars and wants a chance to prove that he can do the right thing.
“I want to experience the world and see what life really has to offer. I want to experience life with my son and teach him new things and show him how big not just the United States is but the world as well,” he wrote. He later added, “I definitely plan on doing nothing but positive things and keeping positive people around me and in my circle.”
A prosecution sentencing memo paints a significantly less flattering picture. It says police were investigating Kehinde in a human trafficking case involving a 17-year-old who admitted to being trafficked. The girl was detained during the probe, and gave permission for police to search her phone, where they found a picture of Kehinde and the girl “kissing on a couch.”
“On (Kehinde’s) phone, officers located saved images consistent with (Kehinde’s) ongoing role in sex work, including screenshots from various websites for advertising sex work and a screenshot of contacts saved as ‘LuxeDolls,’” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonah Ross wrote in a sentencing memo.
Kehinde also faces pending human trafficking charges in Solano County. Authorities say he told an undercover police officer posing as a sex worker she’d have to pay $5,000 to have him as her pimp, and that he showed up to a Vacaville hotel to meet with her, then sped away as police closed in.
Kehinde was convicted of human trafficking in San Francisco in 2015, and again in Alameda County in 2022, the latter of which required him to register as a sex offender.
The Alameda County conviction stemmed from an incident in 2021 when a girl he was trafficking secretly texted a social worker that she was being held against her will. Kehinde’s lawyer argued that the girl lied or exaggerated many of her claims.
