RALEIGH — On Thursday a Wilmington resident and fentanyl distributor, Shawqi Gray, 37, was sentenced to 17 years in prison by Chief U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle.
In November, Gray pleaded guilty to possession with the intent to distribute 100 grams or more of heroin and a quantity of fentanyl, as well as possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, according to a press release from U.S. Attorney Robert Higdon, Jr.
Gray’s case is part of an FBI-led Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force called “Tooth Fairy” focused on the distribution of heroin from New Jersey to New Hanover, Brunswick, Bladen, Duplin, and Sampson Counties.
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Various federal and local law enforcement officers cooperated in the investigation of this case: FBI’s Coastal Carolina Criminal Enterprise Task Force, ATF, New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, and the Easton, Pennsylvania Police Department.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), in August of 2015 Easton police officers searched Gray’s residence when he wasn’t home and found 30 grams of heroin, 68 grams of crack cocaine, and more than $19,000 in cash.
Two years later, in November of 2017, New Hanover Sheriff’s officers searched Gray’s residence and a storage container on the property. They found more than 150 grams of a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, more than 150 grams of a mixture of heroin and ketamine, 5 handguns, and more than $47,000 in cash. Two of the handguns were reported stolen, according to the DOJ.
According to New Hanover 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 drugs. He said detectives found nearly 20,000 unfilled bindles — individual $10 to $20 doses — that indicated the scale of narcotics Gray intended to distribute.
“It’s enough to kill thousands of people,” Hart said at the time.
New Hanover Sheriff Ed McMahon called the bust the single largest seizure for both heroin and fentanyl for the Sheriff’s Office, valued anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million.
But just three months later, the Sheriff’s Office would seize about 2.4 pounds of fentanyl (over 1,000 grams); nearly ten times as much as the Gray bust, and enough to cause fatal overdoses for everyone in the county, twice.
“It’s the fentanyl that’s killing people,” McMahon said at the time. “When we see overdoses, when we see deaths, it’s fentanyl.”
The investigation revealed that Gray was involved in the distribution of more than 1.5 kilograms of a mixture of heroin and fentanyl from July to November 2017, according to Higdon.
