Three men were indicted in Brooklyn after an undercover detective purchased three dozen guns from the group that had been trafficked from South Carolina to New York, officials said Wednesday.
According to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, the guns included automatic weapons and pistols. The firearms, many of which were initially purchased legally in South Carolina, were acquired by an undercover detective mostly during the summer and fall of 2018, according to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez. Gonzalez added that in addition to the guns that were sold to the undercover detective, the group intended to bring 40 more into New York.
"These guns are outrageous,” Gonzalez said, holding up a fully automatic machine gun. “These guns aren’t meant to do anything other than to kill, to maim in New York City … These are killing machines."
The 11 total sales often took place in public places, including near the Broadway Junction train stop, and in broad daylight. Each gun was sold for about $1,000 each, with nine of them being stolen and one taken from a homicide victim.
"What they didn’t know … was the person who was pretending to be a bad guy was actually a brave undercover," Gonzalez said, adding: "Each one of these guns, obviously, could do a lot of damage."
The investigation began in June 2018 when officials said the undercover detective purchased four handguns from one of the defendants in the case.
Inspector Richard Green, the commanding officer of the Gun Violence Suppression Division, said this case is "another example of individuals bringing firearms into the New York metro area to make a quick dollar without any regard for the havoc that these weapons cause."
