DA: Drug Ring Used Boy, 8, As Lookout
Customers came from New Jersey, Long Island and Vermont to buy PCP from this ring.
By Shimon Prokupecz, Jonathan Dienst and Joe Valiquette
| Tuesday, Feb 28, 2012 | Updated 1:41 PM EDT
Prosecutors and police announced 35 arrests Wednesday in the bust of a major drug ring that operated in Harlem and used an 8-year-old boy as a lookout.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said the arrests were made after a 15-month investigation.
The two leaders, a pair of brothers, are accused of selling PCP to customers who lined up to buy the drugs. They received shipments through the mail through UPS and Fed-Ex, prosecutors said.
Vance said the ring drew customers from as far away as Vermont.
One of their buyers was a woman who purchased PCP and then died in an East Harlem fire on Sunday after she began smoking the drug and her clothes caught fire.
Authorities found $35,000 in cash and 2.5 gallons of PCP stashed in Hawaiian Punch bottles in a raid Wednesday.
