Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 3, 1993 TAG: 9302030062
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FINCASTLE LENGTH: Medium
TESTIMONY: TRADING GUNS EASY
HOW FAR DOES Virginia's reputation for easy guns stretch? Try the corner of 132nd Street and Broadway in New York City.
It was easy money. All they needed was a few guns and a car with Virginia license plates.
From there, Michael Eugene Davis, Carl Lawrence and Jessie Lee Calloway, all of Roanoke, would drive to New York City and exchange the guns on the street for crack cocaine.
The guns were easy to come by. They bought them mostly from gun shops around Roanoke or at gun shows. Authorities believe that on at least one trip, the threesome took with them as many as 25 guns.
In New York, finding the drug dealers was equally easy. They drove to 132nd Street and Broadway, where they knew their license tag would be a red flag.
"Hey Virginia!" the dealers would call out, Carl Lawrence testified Tuesday at Davis' drug trial in Botetourt County Circuit Court. The bargaining would begin.
"It was like a shopping mall, like a gun show. We would set them down, people would come over and we would name our price. They'd pay us with crack."
A $200 gun could score the group 40 grams of crack, worth about $2,000 on the street back in Roanoke.
From September 1991 to January 1992, Lawrence, 27, said they made the trip to New York once a week - a small part of a gun pipeline out of Virginia that has given the state a reputation as a primary source of guns along the East Coast.
In December 1991 alone, Davis purchased 15 guns at Roanoke gun shops, according to state police Special Agent David Hammond.
Hammond got a tip about the gunrunning in January 1992.
On the 17th of that month, he waited at the Botetourt County line along with Sheriff Reed Kelly and several county deputies. Hammond had heard that Davis, Lawrence and Calloway would be returning from New York down Interstate 81.
At 6 a.m., Davis' car, a white 1985 Peugeot, crossed into the county.
Lawrence testified Tuesday that he was driving. Davis, 27, was asleep in the passenger's seat next to him and Calloway, also 27, was asleep in the back. The plan was to toss the bag of crack out the window if the police stopped them.
That way, he said, it would be hard for the police to find the crack or prove that it came from their car. Also, he said that if the police missed the throwaway, the three could go back and recover the bag later.
But Lawrence said he was high on cocaine on this particular trip. Already, he had alerted his sleeping passengers to sirens and flashing lights in the rear-view mirror that weren't really there. Davis and Calloway told him it was the drug playing tricks on his mind.
So, when Hammond, Kelly and company descended on the Peugeot, Lawrence didn't bother Davis and Calloway. "I had been snorting coke for 6 1/2 hours. . . . I was high. I thought I was paranoid," he said.
By the time he realized he wasn't, it was too late to throw anything out the window without being noticed. There were patrol cars in front of them, behind them and in the left lane beside them. Lawrence said Davis and Calloway woke up and asked if he had been speeding.
"This ain't no speeding stop," he answered.
Hammond and Kelly testified Tuesday that they searched the car and found an empty box for a 9mm Llama semiautomatic pistol and some 9mm ammunition. They had started to strip-search Calloway, when a bag landed near Lawrence's feet. It contained more than 100 grams of crack, worth about $12,000 in Roanoke.
Lawrence said they traded the 9mm Llama and about $800 for the bag.
All three men were charged with possession of crack with the intent to distribute. Calloway was convicted on the charge last month and sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $10,000.
On the same day, Lawrence pleaded guilty to the charge. He awaits sentencing later this month.
Details of the weekly guns-for-drugs trips did not come out at those trials, however. Lawrence came forward only in recent weeks. He said he hoped that his testimony would be considered by Circuit Judge George E. Honts III at his sentencing on Feb. 11.
Tuesday, Davis also pleaded guilty to the drug charge. His sentencing was set for March 16. Both Lawrence and Davis are being held at the Botetourt County Jail in Fincastle.