AUBURN — A local man has been re-indicted by an Androscoggin County grand jury on four felony charges, including aggravated assault, after questions were raised during the federal prosecution of a gun possession charge.

Kenneth A. Sales, 24, of Auburn was indicted in June last year on one count of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a 16-year-old child, two counts of unlawful possession of scheduled drugs, having a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle and failure to sign a summons on May 6, 2013.

According to court records, Auburn police responded to a report of a possible stabbing at home where they found the adult, female victim in a car with Sales, and that she had been injured with a knife. As he got out of the car, police saw a Hi-Point .45-caliber ACP pistol on the driver’s seat where he had been sitting, according to court records.

He later admitted to police that the gun was in his possession. He was barred from having firearms at that time because he had been convicted of a domestic violence charge in a Vermont state court, according to the Office of U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II.

On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Andrew Matulis said the state’s charges against Sales were dismissed last January in keeping with the federal Petit policy that requires state courts to dismiss cases if federal prosecutors pursue any piece of the case.

In Sales’ case, prosecutors charged him with possession a firearm after he had been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The federal government did not pursue the lesser charges that had been part of the Androscoggin County indictment.

Sales pleaded guilty to the gun charge in late January, and had been facing up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Then, Matulis said, a question was raised about whether Sales’ Vermont conviction qualified as a domestic violence conviction for purposes of the federal prosecution, and that question is something now being argued at the federal level. There is a possibility the federal conviction could be overturned, Matulis said.

“As soon as we heard that,” he said, “we re-initiated his prosecution” at the state level with the intention of pursuing the original case.

Last week, Sales was indicted on the same six charges he faced in Androscoggin County Superior Court last year, including charges that he had cocaine and promethazine HCI, an antihistamine, in his possession on May 6, 2013. He has not yet entered a plea.

If convicted of all charges, he faces more than 30 years in jail and more than $90,000 in fines.

Sales has a 2013 conviction for violating conditions of his release in June of that year, and was sentenced to serve 119 days in the Androscoggin County Jail.

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