A Buffalo, N.Y., man who was previously accused of delivering cocaine in Bradford will serve life in prison for selling a fatal dose of drugs that killed a Cheektowaga, N.Y., woman in 2017.
Dontrell R. Wise, 32, was given a life sentence by Chief U.S. District Judge Frank Geraci Jr., U.S. Attorney James Kennedy Jr. announced last week.
A federal jury found Wise guilty of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute heroin, butyryl fentanyl, fentanyl, cocaine and crack cocaine; possession with intent to distribute butyryl fentanyl; and distribution of fentanyl causing death, a press release from Kennedy reported.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Adler.
The release provided this information from Adler: “Between mid-November of 2017 and November 23, 2017, (Wise) distributed fentanyl which caused the death of a 28 year old female in Cheektowaga, NY.”
Wise sold about 10 grams of a substance that contained fentanyl, and the woman injected it into her body; Cheektowaga police responded to the scene hours later to find her dead, according to the release.
Evidence presented at trial established Wise as “a central member of a larger conspiracy crossing state lines, involving the distribution of narcotics in both Buffalo, NY, and Bradford, PA,” the release stated.
In fact, according to information previously reported in The Era, Wise was one of several suspected drug dealers arrested on Nov. 17, 2010, in McKean County. It was this day that several law enforcement agencies broke up a major cocaine ring from Buffalo, N.Y., to Bradford. During the bust, Task Force members reportedly seized cocaine with a street value of approximately $15,000.
The bust, which included the execution of three separate search warrants, resulted from an investigation by the McKean County Drug Task Force.
In 2011, Wise was sentenced to three to six years in Pennsylvania state prison for drug-related offenses in three cases. In two cases, he had pleaded guilty to charges of possession with the intent to deliver a controlled substance, and in the third case to a charge of liability for the conduct of another, complicity.
The 2017 federal charges — for which he was just sentenced to life in prison — resulted from an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Safe Streets Task Force, the Buffalo Police Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Cheektowaga Police Department.
Buffalo police officers had stopped Wise two weeks prior to the Cheektowaga woman’s death. At the time, Wise was in a rental vehicle with heavily tinted windows, and he was found to be in possession of more than $8,000 in cash, Kennedy’s release stated. A co-conspirator, Jerell Weathersby, was accused at that time of possessing butyryl fentanyl.
Wise, Weathersby and a third co-defendant, Larmoio Jones, were arrested.
Jones is serving 63 months in prison for a charge of distribution of a controlled substance, and Jones Weathersby is serving 21 months in prison for a charge of possession with the attempt to distribute butyryl fentanyl, according to Kennedy.
