Christina Marie Pena-Cantor, still on probation for robbing a Waterville taxi driver eight years ago, now will return to prison for six years for trafficking in cocaine base and heroin.
Pena-Cantor, 40, pleaded guilty Thursday at the Capital Judicial Center to two charges of unlawful trafficking that occurred Nov. 7, 2017, involving heroin, and Nov. 9, 2017, involving cocaine base. The drug sales occurred in the parking lot of Burger King in Waterville.
Assistant District Attorney Christopher Coleman said two Waterville police officers directly witnessed the drug sales, which were conducted by a confidential informant wearing a wire and furnished with recorded buy money.
Coleman said Pena-Cantor admitted the conduct to police.
Pena-Cantor had been sentenced in 2011 on the robbery conviction to 10 years in prison, with all but 30 months suspended, and four years of probation.
On Thursday, the judge revoked the 4.5 years remaining of that suspended sentence and ordered Pena-Cantor to serve that at the same time she serves the six-year sentence.
In that robbery, Pena-Cantor headed a conspiracy in which she convinced an 18-year-old man and two 14-year-old girls to rob a taxi driver at knifepoint, apparently so she could get the money to pay her rent. Pena-Cantor was not in the taxi when the robbery occurred.
The taxi driver, who was stabbed by the man in the back, stomach, hand and neck, sounded his horn and the three scattered. All pleaded guilty in that incident.
Pena-Cantor also had a previous drug trafficking conviction resulting from an incident in March 2014, when police used a battering ram to break into a room at the Budget Host Inn, where four people were charged with selling cocaine and pills.
References to that prior conviction — contained in the 2017 charges of aggravated trafficking — were deleted in exchange for Pena-Cantor’s plea to the two counts of unlawful trafficking.
Betty Adams — 621-5631
Twitter: @betadams
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