The charge has been resolved.
In February of this year, Daria Berenato a.k.a. Sonya Deville of WWE was arrested for possession of a firearm without the correct state permit. The charge against her has been resolved and details were provided by Jim Walsh of Courier Post.
A valet employee found the gun in Berenato’s vehicle at a casino-hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Berenato hails from Shamong, New Jersey. The gun was lawfully acquired and registered in another state, but Berenato did not have a permit to carry in New Jersey.
According to the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, Berenato resolved the charge by completing six months in a pretrial intervention program that she finished up in late November.
Her entry into the program was approved on May 25th. The prosecutor’s office said it consented to her admission based on a 2014 memo from the state Attorney General’s Office. The memo makes entry into a program ‘routine in cases’ with the similar fact patterns. The outlet reached out to Berenato and her attorney but did not receive a response.
The Attorney General’s memo on gun charges stems from a situation that occurred a year prior which involved the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office. A Philadelphia woman, Shaneen Allen, was allowed into a diversion program after the memo’s release. She had been facing a mandatory prison term with at least 42 months before parole eligibility for a similar gun charge that Berenato was facing. The memo noted that a prison term was not necessary nor appropriate for “otherwise law-abiding persons who inadvertently violate New Jersey’s gun laws.”
Berenato is currently sidelined after undergoing surgery for a torn ACL. Before her injury, she was one-half of the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions with Chelsea Green.
