The Chester County Sheriff’s Office has charged a married couple in connection with the largest-ever fentanyl bust in the county.
Deputies seized 1,700 grams of fentanyl, 87 grams of crack cocaine, approximately 2 pounds of marijuana, and 17 firearms, including several AR-style assault rifles, Sheriff Max Dorsey said during a press conference Monday.
Travaris and Lamonica Dixon each face between 25 and 40 years in prison if convicted of a slate of charges, including trafficking, possession with intent to distribute, and possession of a deadly weapon during a violent crime.
Dorsey said the Dixons have five children, whom he said were “ placed in a safe environment” according to CCSO policy. He said the seizure stemmed from “community involvement.”
“ We're very appreciative of the people that provide us information,” he said.
Dorsey estimated the street value of the drugs to be about $250,000.
“This is the largest fentanyl seizure in the history of Chester County,” Dorsey said. “That's something that we are proud of, obviously, to get that large amount of drugs off the streets. But that is not something that we're proud of to know that that type of drug is on our streets.”
Dorsey, a longtime narcotics officer with SLED, said the scale of the seizure has the potential to preempt several hundred thousand overdose deaths by fentanyl.
“The fentanyl seized on Friday had the potential to be a fatal overdose for as many as 800,000 people,” he said. “To put that in perspective, that's everyone that lives in York, Chester, Lancaster, Fairfield, and Richland counties. So that could have killed every citizen along the I-77 corridor in South Carolina. And that's a conservative estimate.”
Dorsey said his office will keep looking for connections that might stem from the Dixons’ arrest.
“Let's be honest,” he said. “These drugs aren't being made in the backyard in Edgemore [the community where the Dixons lived]. They're being made in China. They're coming into America through the [southern]t border.”
Dorsey said he hopes border security measures enacted by the Trump administration will help put a dent in the flow of drugs onto the streets. But he also said he’s concerned about the vacuum that taking so much fentanyl out of circulation in Chester County might create.
”We are now extremely hopeful that due to the steps taken by our federal government, by securing the border, that will have an effect in our local community,” Dorsey said after the press conference. “But with the stopping of that flow comes the risk that we will see at our local community, number one, the price of those drugs are going to go up; Number two, the people who are struggling with addiction, they're still going to seek out these drugs and they're going to take extreme measures to do that.”
Dorsey said a typical offshoot of a big drug bust is a rise in property crimes to pay for increased illicit drug prices.
“People will go to great lengths to steal things that they normally wouldn't steal just to secure money to buy a drug that's seen a price increase,” he said. "Those are things that will be concerned about.”