Putting in work down in West Virginia and Kentucky is virtually a rite of passage in the Detroit drug scene. Dealers spanning multiple factions and generations in the Motor City drug game have been traveling to Lexington, Kentucky and cities across the state of West Virginia to make a quick buck. They push everything from marijuana, cocaine and heroin to fentanyl, Vicodin and Oxycodone and they wreak havoc. Things have amped up in the Detroit-to-Appalachia drug superhighway lately. There’s been an uptick of arrests and convictions of Detroiters in Lexington and several different West Virginia regions for serious narcotics offenses the past two and a half years. Let’s look at the biggest busts and prison sentences since 2016: January 12, 2016 – Devonte Hobbs shoots Timmy Brown to death in the parking lot of a Lexington McDonald’s at drug deal gone wrong. The pair had a beef dating back to their days in Detroit when Brown allegedly robbed Hobbs of drugs and money. January 11, 2017 – Navarius Westberry is smacked with a life prison sentence for distributing heroin and fentanyl in West Virginia college towns that resulted in an overdose death. Westberry becomes the first person in decades in the state’s justice system to be saddled with a life sentence under the habitual offender statute. January 23, 2017 – Lamar (Juice) Thornton is arrested for distributing heroin responsible for a rash of overdoses in and around Lexington. January 30, 2017 – James (Jimmy the Shoe) Cheatham is sentenced to two years in federal prison for selling $2,000 worth of heroin to an undercover DEA agent. July 26, 2017 – Tyler Mack is arrested for a drive-by shooting in Lexington. September 28, 2017 – Antonio Loyd and Randy Roberts try to kidnap a drug debtor outside a Lexington middle school football game, but Loyd is shot by the guy they are trying to grab. Both Loyd and Roberts are arrested for the attack. January 22, 2018 – Robert McKissic is indicted for the October 2017 killing of Anthony Carter in an alleged argument over a drug debt. McKissic is brought into custody in Detroit. January 24, 2018 – James (Lucky) Bowens and George (G-Easy) Eubanks, West Virginia crew bosses for the Northwest Detroit Young N’ Scandalous Gang, are indicted on drug, racketeering and kidnapping offenses. February 6, 2018 – Willie (Ribbon) McCall is sentenced to ten years in prison for dealing crystal meth to an undercover DEA agent in the Huntington area. February 7, 2018 – Marcell Dunbar and Gerald Jones are hit with eight and four-year prison terms respectively for sealing Oxycodone in Lexington. February 16, 2018 – Steven (Stevie Black) Crawley and Roger (Red) Crawley are busted by the feds in Huntington on drug and weapons charges. March 20, 2018 – Old-school Motown drug dealer Stanford Coleman is hit with a 28 year sentence for selling Oxycodone in Mt. Sterling, West Virginia. April 17, 2018 – The entire Peterson Family Gang, led by kingpin Willie (Chill) Peterson and his baby brother and right-hand man Manget (Money) Peterson, goes down in the Operation Saigon Sunset bust. The Peterson family had been operating a drug pipeline from Michigan to West Virginia since the early 2000s. July 6, 2018 – Donald (Tank) Smith is sentenced to life in state prison under a habitual offender act. He was arrested four times for dealing drugs in Huntington between 2016 and 2017. July 30, 2018 – Vince Edge is sentenced to seven years on drug conspiracy in federal court for operating a heroin and pill business in Richmond, near the campuses of Eastern Kentucky and Morehead St.
