A task force with the state Attorney General’s Office seized more than 30 pounds of fentanyl worth more than $1.4 million from a Braddock home during an arrest that also turned up a half dozen cars and guns, officials said Thursday.
Domonique Taylor, 37, faces more than a dozen charges related to the drugs and guns police removed from his Moody Street home.
“Today, thanks to strong collaboration with our local law enforcement partners, we shut down a major drug trafficking operation in Western Pennsylvania,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a statement.
He called drug trafficking a violent enterprise and praised collaborative law enforcement approaches as “how we fight back against gun violence and those who push poisons onto our streets.”
Investigators from the AG’s office, Munhall, Monroeville, Penn Hills and Elizabeth Township police served a warrant on Taylor’s home March 11. The initial search of the home turned up dozens of items police listed as evidence, including various containers of cash, bags of marijuana, cocaine, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and various firearms.
Investigators also found two trailers, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and five cars: a Mercedes Benz, an H2 Hummer, a Ram truck, a GMC Acadia SUV and a Cadillac. They also seized more than $535,000 in cash.
Members of the task forced had been conducting surveillance on the home since the beginning of January, and they reported seeing Taylor moving buckets, boxes and duffel bags around the home and into and out of a trailer and garage near the home, according to the criminal complaint.
Police said Taylor owns 22 vehicles and numerous properties, and he told investigators he pays for everything in cash. He said he hasn’t filed taxes because “it’s just cash.” He admitted to moving drugs from his home to one of his trailers and to his garage because he feared his home being robbed, according to the complaint.
A search of the garage turned up 14 kilos of fentanyl in a black duffel bag, guns and ammo, a white Corvette and a black Impala, according to the complaint.
The 14 kilos of fentanyl, police said, equals out to 700,000 individual doses with a street value of more than $1.5 million.
