A 43-year-old Manhattan man was sentenced to 10 1/2 years in prison for operating a drug trafficking operation with several Long Island City residents, according to Bridget M. Rohde, acting United States attorney for the eastern district of New York.
Edward “Super Ed” Carrillo distributed fentanyl, a drug that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, which led to a mother’s death in West Virginia in April 2015. Seven people, including Carrillo, were charged in 2016 for trafficking into the country’s largest housing development large amounts of crack cocaine, fentanyl and oxycodone.
The investigation, which included court-authorized wiretaps of two phones for nine months, found that the drug-trafficking operation based out of the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City was responsible for the distribution of more than 280 grams of crack, 400 grams of fentanyl pills and oxycodone.
Edward Carrillo, along with Johnnie Monroe, 46, of Brooklyn and a co-conspirator, continued to sell the pills even after they heard that their product killed a mother in West Virginia, the criminal complaint said.
Carrillo’s co-conspirator was intercepted over a wiretap saying, “the girl went out.” When Carrillo asked what the co-conspirator meant by “went out,” the co-conspirator replied, “Went out! OD, OD,” which means overdose.
Carrillo, Monroe and the co-conspirator also are charged with the attempted armed robbery of a person they believed to be traveling from West Virginia to New York carrying $110,000 in drug proceeds. The drug trafficker never showed up but one of the defendants said they “would have taken him down” with their “biscuits” or gun if he did show up.
When Carrillo was arrested in December 2016 cops found a loaded gun in his apartment, which he operated as a grow house for marijuana. He also supplied much of the cocaine that was turned into crack and sold at the Queensbridge Houses.
In November of 2017, Long Island City resident Terrell “Rell” Carmichael, 31, was sentenced to 51 months in prison for conspiring to distribute crack.
“The defendant peddled fentanyl from New York City to West Virginia with callous disregard for the human consequences of this dangerous drug,” Rohde said. “Carrillo’s sentence should serve as a message that fentanyl dealers who promote and profit from this deadly epidemic will be held accountable for their crimes.”
The remaining defendants include Michael Young, 32, of Long Island City; Lashawn Balance, 41, of West Virginia; Darryl Knowles, 29, of the Bronx; and Kyle Williams, 31, of Long Island City.
