Benjamin Ball

Introduction

Benjamin Ball is a 31-year-old man from Sanford, Maine, who pleaded guilty in federal court in Portland to a series of firearm offenses tied to a string of shootings in southern Maine, including one into an occupied home while the residents slept inside. According to court records summarized by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ball fired a 9mm pistol into a Lebanon residence in January 2024 over a drug debt, then conspired in further shootings at the same house and at a home in Acton using a pistol, a shotgun, and an AR-15. Because he was already a convicted felon, every one of those guns was illegal for him to hold, and his plea now carries a mandatory-minimum federal sentence that must run consecutively to the rest.

Background Information

At the time of the shootings, Ball had previously been convicted of several felonies, which made him prohibited from possessing firearms under federal law. That status is what converted his state-level conduct — shootings into homes in Lebanon and Acton, Maine — into a federal prosecution built on firearm counts rather than on the underlying disputes. The case was investigated by the York County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI’s Southern Maine Gang Task Force, with assistance from the Sanford, Kittery, and Gorham police departments, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Two of Ball’s co-conspirators, Jason Fernald, 47, and Evan Chapman, 28, previously pleaded guilty to their involvement in the shootings.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Pleaded guilty; sentencing pending. Benjamin Ball admitted in federal court to discharging a firearm during a drug-trafficking crime, conspiring to carry firearms during drug trafficking, and possessing guns as a felon; he has not yet been sentenced.

The central incident happened late in the evening on January 3, 2024. Ball, sitting in the front passenger seat of a vehicle as it drove past a residence in Lebanon, fired a 9mm pistol into the home. The shooting, according to court records, was carried out over a drug debt owed to a co-conspirator. What made the case provable was chance and hardware: a motion-activated security camera mounted on a house across the street captured the shooting, and the residents of the targeted home were inside and asleep in their beds when the bullets came through. Nobody in the release is reported injured, but the people inside the house had no role in the dispute the shooting was meant to settle.

The Lebanon house was not the only target. Ball also conspired with others to carry out two additional shootings at the same Lebanon residence, and a shooting at a residence in Acton, armed with the 9mm pistol, a 12-gauge shotgun, and an AR-15 across the series of attacks. He pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Portland to three counts: discharging a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, conspiring to use and carry firearms during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. The discharge count alone carries a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in federal prison, which must be served consecutively to the sentences imposed on the other counts; each remaining count carries a maximum of 20 years, a fine of up to $250,000, and up to three years of supervised release.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The consequences announced with the plea are structural: Ball will be sentenced only after the completion of a presentence investigative report by the U.S. Probation Office, and a federal district court judge will determine the final term under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutory factors. The release frames the prosecution as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Department of Justice’s violent-crime reduction strategy relaunched in May 2021, which pairs federal prosecutors with community-based prevention and focuses enforcement on the most serious, readily provable offenses. For the residents of the Lebanon home, the plea is the government’s acknowledgment that armed men fired into their house while they slept, and that the shooters will answer for it in federal court.

Current Status

Ball stands convicted by his own plea and awaits sentencing. His admissions cover the January 3, 2024, drive-by discharge into the Lebanon residence, his conspiracy role in the two further Lebanon shootings and the Acton shooting, and his possession of the 9mm pistol, the shotgun, and the AR-15 despite his felony record. Sentencing will follow the presentence investigation, and the ten-year mandatory minimum on the discharge count must run consecutively, meaning any realistic term begins at a decade before the other counts are even counted. His co-conspirators Fernald and Chapman have already pleaded guilty in the same case family. No trial is needed and none is scheduled; only the sentence remains to be imposed.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Ball entered the plea as a 31-year-old felon whose drug dispute had escalated into four armed shootings against houses in two towns. The guilty plea converts the security-camera footage, the recovered arsenal, and the testimony trail into a federal record that guarantees years of imprisonment measured in decades rather than months, starting with a mandatory ten consecutive years on the discharge count alone. The three-year supervised-release terms that attach on top of each count mean that even after custody, his movements, associations, and conduct remain under federal supervision. For a man whose offenses were committed from the passenger seat of a moving car, the case ends with a fixed seat in federal custody — and the sleepers in the Lebanon home, who were the intended audience of none of it, are the reason the counts read as they do.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Maine, “Sanford Man Pleads Guilty to Multiple Firearm Offenses,” November 2026. source