An Ozone Park man will be spending the next 10 years behind bars for unknowingly selling 17 guns and cocaine to undercover police officers over a two-month period in Brooklyn.
Everton Gonzalez, 24, along with Arverne‘s Omar Cobb, 21, and Zameer Khan, 21, were initially arrested as a result of an two-month investigation that began in November 2014. As part of the probe, undercover officers made numerous gun and drug purchases in the area of Liberty Avenue and Drew Street in the City Line section of Brooklyn and in the vicinity of Beach 59th Street and Larkin Avenue in Far Rockaway.
According to Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, Gonzalez made a number of deals with an undercover officer. Reportedly, Gonzalez sent Cobb, his cousin, to deliver the guns, but when Cobb claimed that he couldn’t get to Brooklyn, he insisted that the undercover officer travel to Queens to purchase the weapons.
Prosecutors said Khan also collaborated with Cobb in the illegal transactions, selling 60 grams of what was purported to be crack cocaine to an undercover officer for $3,500. Testing of the substance, however, revealed that the product did not contain narcotics.
Over the course of the investigation, officers purchased from the trio a wide variety of firearms including 9 mm pistols and assault weapons, a .44-caliber Ruger revolver, a .357 Ruger revolver and a .38-caliber Argentina revolver. They also purchased four ounces of genuine crack cocaine.
Gonzalez plead guilty in April to second-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance and second-degree criminal sale of a firearm. He was sentenced on Wednesday, Oct. 5, to serve 10 years in prison.
“This defendant put public safety at risk by selling guns, and his conviction and sentence is another step toward ending gun violence in our communities,” Thompson said in a statement on Thursday, Oct. 6.
Both Cobb and Khan previously plead guilty to charges of criminal sale of a firearm and are now serving prison sentences of seven and five years, respectively.
