WILMINGTON — After a month-long investigation, detectives with the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office seized record amounts of both heroin and fentanyl during an arrest.
Detectives executed a warrant for Shawqi Rahim Gray, a 36-year-old man who is also wanted by authorities in Easton, Penn, for possession of cocaine and heroin with intent to sell.
According to Captain Jonathan Hart, division commander for vice and narcotics, Gray was renting the upstairs of a residence at 2702 Oleander Drive for the purposes of processing and distributing heroin and other narcotics.
When authorities served a warrant for Gray on Thursday, Nov. 30, they found enough material to distribute tens of thousands of doses of heroin, including:
- 393.15 grams of raw heroin
- 803 bags of heroin ready for sale and or delivery
- 110 grams of fentanyl
- 8.5 grams of cocaine
- 10 grams of marijuana
- 5 firearms (two confirmed stolen)
- $47,390.00 in U.S. currency
According to Sheriff Ed McMahon, this is the single largest seizure for both heroin and fentanyl for the Sheriff’s Office; valued anywhere from a conservative $500,000 to $1 million. McMahon highlighted the importance of taking fentanyl off the streets.
“It’s the fentanyl that’s killing people,” McMahon said. “When we see overdoses, when we see deaths, it’s fentanyl.”
The level of purity of fentanyl varies wildly, making its strength hard to predict, although even small dose – “a single grain,” as McMahon said – can be fatal.
According to Hart, the fentanyl seize from Gray was approximately 50 times stronger than heroin; in other words, 110 grams of this fentanyl was equivalent to about 12 pounds of heroin. Detectives found nearly 20,000 unfilled bindles, an indication of how many bindles – or individual $10 to $20 doses – Gray intended to distribute, Hart said.
“It’s enough to kill thousands of people,” Hart said.
Detectives also found five hand guns, all of them loaded. Two of the weapons have been confirmed stolen – one from New Hanover County, traced to an incident six months ago – and one from Myrtle Beach, Hart said.
While Gray’s arrest is part of a larger investigation, Hart would say that detectives believe Gray has connections with gang activity in both the Pennsylvania area and locally in Wilmington. The sheer amount of heroin and fentanyl indicated to detectives that Gray was well established and “high up” in gang hierarchy, Hart said.
Hart described the arrest as uneventful, saying Gray surrendered when detectives arrived.
“He knew this day was coming,” Hart said. “Before we even found (the narcotics), he admitted to it.”
Related stories: Our series on the heroin and opioid epidemic in the Cape Fear area
Sheriff McMahon said that while heroin in this case is suspected of being trafficked in from New Jersey, detectives suspect the fentanyl is from China; McMahon said that information was beyond the scope of the local county investigation, but had been relayed from the District Attorney’s office and other law enforcement agencies.
Hart added that detectives have found fentanyl with increasing frequency in recent years. The substance is powerful enough that Sheriff’s deputies are taking precautions to avoiding inhaling a dangerous or fatal dose.
“All of us, down to patrol officers are now equipped with more proactive gear,” Hart said. He added that, after several cases nationwide of officers accidentally inhaling fentanyl at crime scenes, the Sheriff’s Office now utilizes a special CSI unit to catalog and transport narcotics that may contain fentanyl.
While this is the largest single narcotics bust in the Office’s history, Hart said several comparable investigations are also currently underway.
Send comments and tips to Benjamin Schachtman at ben@localvoicemedia.com, @pcdben on Twitter, and (910) 538-2001.
