Alabama: Five Arrested After Raid on Suspected Decatur Gambling House
- Decatur police arrested five people on October 20, 2026, after searching a suspected gambling house on Hoover Avenue Southwest that had drawn months of complaints, the Decatur Police Department said,…
- One of the men charged was arrested after a 2023 raid on the same block, The Decatur Daily reported.
- Police said they had received numerous complaints over several months about an illegal gambling house within city limits.
Decatur police arrested five people on October 20, 2026, after searching a suspected gambling house on Hoover Avenue Southwest that had drawn months of complaints, the Decatur Police Department said, as reported by WAFF.
One of the men charged was arrested after a 2023 raid on the same block, The Decatur Daily reported.
The search
Police said they had received numerous complaints over several months about an illegal gambling house within city limits.
Officers from the Vice/Narcotics Unit and the Special Enforcement Team, backed by SWAT, served a search warrant in the 1000 block of Hoover Avenue SW. They found multiple gambling machines, a firearm and cash, police said. WAFF’s report did not specify the number of machines or the amount of cash.
Who was charged
- Javonne Sears: promoting gambling and violating a protection order
- Maher Alqassari: promoting gambling
- Riley Clinkscale: simple gambling
- Victoria Ross: simple gambling and second-degree possession of marijuana
- Marilyn Campbell: simple gambling
Sears, 38, and Alqassari, 35, were released on bond less than two hours after being booked, according to Morgan County Jail records cited by The Decatur Daily, which listed Alqassari as Maher Alqassari Anwaraddin.
What the charges mean
The two gambling charges differ in one key way under Alabama law: the role a person is accused of playing. Promoting gambling covers anyone who knowingly advances or profits from unlawful gambling “otherwise than as a player.” It is a Class A misdemeanor, which carries up to a year in county jail.
Simple gambling involves knowingly advancing or profiting from unlawful gambling activity as a player. It is a Class C misdemeanor, with a maximum of three months in jail. The statute provides a defense where the person was participating in a social game in a private place.
Earlier Hoover Avenue case
It is not the first time Alqassari has faced a promoting gambling charge. He was arrested in June 2023 after a raid on a suspected gambling establishment in the same block of Hoover Avenue Southwest, The Decatur Daily reported.
Investigators found about 50 gambling devices, multiple firearms, illegal drugs and an extensive surveillance system in that raid, the paper said. It was not clear whether the latest search involved the same property, the paper added.
Court records show he pleaded guilty to promoting gambling in January 2025 and was sentenced to 365 days in the Morgan County Jail, with credit for time served and the rest of the sentence suspended, according to the paper. He also received two years of unsupervised probation. A year is the maximum jail term for a Class A misdemeanor in Alabama.
In a recent North Carolina case, more than 280 police calls in a year led to a Raleigh sweepstakes parlor raid and charges against five people.
Police noted that all five defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
