Lynn man sent to prison on drug, assault charges

SALEM – A Lynn man who got caught peddling Percocet last New Year?s Day after he kicked, slapped and strangled his girlfriend during an argument in her Chestnut Street home and then stole her car and cell phone will spend five years in state prison.Jamaal Thornton, 28, last known address of 12 Nottingham Court, Lynn, made his guilty plea Thursday before Judge Timothy Q. Feeley in Salem Superior Court, confessing to trafficking over 14 grams of opium, larceny of a motor vehicle, larceny from a building, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and assault and battery.Feeley agreed to adopt the recommendation proposed by Assistant District Attorney Jean M. Curran and defense lawyer Randi Potash.On Jan. 1, 2011, police were summoned to a home at 288 Chestnut St., where they were met by a 27-year-old female who said she had been beaten by Thornton and that while inside her home he took her cell phone.She told police when she confronted him about texting someone, he became angry, slapped her face, leaving a print, then dragged her into a room, began strangling her and also kicked her before he eventually left the home with her cell phone and her car, a Mercedes Benz 230.It was around 9:49 p.m., when Lynn Police Officer Roger Tinkham stopped Thornton on Nottingham Court driving the stolen vehicle.During a “pat frisk” police discovered 77 Percocet tablets in his jacket, along with $557 in cash.Thornton was indicted by an Essex County grand jury last March and has been free on $2,500 cash bail since being arraigned. The judge credited him the seven days he spent in jail in lieu of bail on the case.