Records: Dalton Smith was first arrested at age 16
The masked parolee who invaded a Uniondale home where a 21-year-old student was shot and killed was just 16 when first arrested and had a long rap sheet of crimes committed on Long Island, records show.
Dalton Smith, 30, who was shot and killed early Friday by a Nassau police officer along with Hofstra student Andrea Rebello after police said he held a gun to her head, spent much of the past 12 years in New York prisons for robbery and weapons charges, records show. A warrant for his arrest was out at the time of the shooting because of a parole violation from an attempted robbery conviction.
Smith's first legal scrape came in 1999 in Rockville Centre when he was charged with felony robbery, assault, unauthorized use of a vehicle, criminal possession of stolen property, grand larceny and attempted robbery. Village police said immediate details of the arrest were not available.
Smith, who was using a Greenville, N.C., address at the time, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2000. He was sent to an upstate prison. An attorney for Smith could not be reached for comment Sunday.
For much of the next decade, Smith's life was dominated by prison sentences, parole hearings and an inability to stay out of trouble. Nine months after his 1999 prison sentence, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of promoting prison contraband. He was also charged with marijuana possession. He was paroled in 2003 on the 1999 charges.
It wasn't long before Smith was in trouble again.
He served nine years at the Five Points Correctional Facility upstate beginning in 2004 on a Nassau attempted robbery and criminal possession of a weapon conviction. He was paroled in May 2012, violated parole and was back in prison.
He was freed in February, according to records.
A warrant was issued in April for Smith's arrest because "we weren't able to talk to him," said Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. Correction officials didn't respond to interview requests yesterday about how Smith was being monitored.
Smith's relatives in New York and North Carolina were unavailable for comment.
With Tania Lopez, Matthew Chayes and Candice Ferrette
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