Two Howard County judges sentenced Columbia resident Tavon Donya Sands to an additional 14 years in prison yesterday, saying he poses too great a threat to public safety to warrant anything less.

The sentences - nine years for drug and gun possession and five years for a probation violation - will be tacked on to the 20 years Sands is serving for an earlier armed robbery conviction. Sands also is accused of being the shooter in a January homicide in Columbia.

The sentences were imposed in separate proceedings.

"The public safety issue here is overwhelming, and there is nothing ... that remotely suggests that Mr. Sands is salvageable," Howard Circuit Judge James B. Dudley said before imposing sentence for the probation violation. "It's purely a question of warehousing a dangerous person."

Howard Circuit Judge Lenore R. Gelfman, who handled the drug and gun case, noted that, at age 21, Sands has a lengthy criminal history - and four convictions for crimes involving guns.

"He is a danger to the public, and whether he understands it or not, he is a danger to himself," she said.

The cases are two of a half-dozen - including charges of murder and attempted murder - filed by Howard County authorities against Sands since he was released from prison in January last year after serving a three-year sentence for a 1998 assault.

Despite those arrests, Sands was able to make bond repeatedly and return to Howard County streets last year. After his arrest on murder and related charges in the shooting death Jan. 25 of computer student DeShawn Anthony Wallace, 23, during a botched robbery, police officials held out his case as a failure of the criminal justice system.

Sands has since been convicted in three of the cases - an armed robbery in October last year, a drug and gun case in May last year stemming from a traffic stop and a probation violation for the 1998 assault case - and acquitted in a separate gun-possession case. The murder and attempted-murder cases are still pending.

Yesterday, Dudley, who imposed the original sentence - eight years in prison, suspending all but three for the 1998 assault - lamented his decision not to come down harder on Sands earlier. In that case, Sands was accused of pistol-whipping a young man on a Columbia bike path after a sandlot football game.

"So it was a bad case and I guess I made the regrettable mistake of yielding to the plea made on Mr. Sands' behalf ... a mistake I rarely make," he said.

Sands' defense attorneys told both judges that they knew their client's record made leniency a difficult thing to ask for. Still, they noted that Sands had a "horrible" childhood.

"I know that Mr. Sands is viewed, as he put it, as public enemy No. 1, and that appears to be one side of him," assistant public defender Janette DeBoissiere told Dudley. "But that isn't the whole picture of who he is."

Both she and attorney Denis Charlesworth, who handled the drug and gun case in front of Gelfman, noted that Sands was already serving a lengthy sentence. Charlesworth asked for a "light at the end of the tunnel" for Sands.

Sands apologized to Dudley, saying he has been "going through a bad time in my life."

But prosecutors noted his criminal record and said he is a threat to the public.

"When you combine drugs with guns ... that's a dangerous combination to have on the streets of Howard County," said prosecutor Kim Oldham.