GREENSBORO ― A man from a neighboring county will spend the next 15 years bars on drug and weapons charges.
Voneric Laquane Primus, of Laurinburg, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge N. Carlton Tilley Jr. to 180 months in federal prison with five years of supervised release Friday for selling crack cocaine and handguns in Scotland County last year, according to a press release issued by the office of Matthew T. Martin, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.
Primus pleaded guilty Sept. 5 to six counts of possession of a firearm by a previously convicted felon, four counts of distribution of a cocaine base and one count of possessing a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime.
Federal prosecutors say Primus sold a total of seven handguns and 252 grams of crack cocaine to a confidential informant working for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives between May 2 and June 6 of 2018.
He has previous convictions for discharging a weapon into an occupied property, possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of a Schedule II controlled substance, according to prosecutors. However, none of those are from North Carolina, according to online records with the N.C. Department of Public Safety Division of Adult Correction.
The case was investigated by the BATFE and the Laurinburg Police Department and prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Anand P. Ramaswamy.
