Wilmerding man pleads guilty to having fentanyl from New York

A Wilmerding man took a bus from Pittsburgh to New York and spent an hour there before returning home with a backpack full of heroin and fentanyl, federal authorities said Friday.

Ronnell Lawrence, 31, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to a drug crime after investigators found nearly 400 grams of a heroin/fentanyl mixture in his backpack nearly two years ago.

U.S. Attorney Scott W. Brady said that on July 10, 2017, Lawrence boarded a bus bound for New York at the Greyhound Bus Station in Downtown Pittsburgh. His brother, Rondell Lawrence, dropped him off at the station and picked him up the next day, Brady said.

When Rondell Lawrence picked up his brother, investigators saw Ronnell Lawrence put a large camouflage backpack into the back of the SUV. Investigators stopped the SUV for having an expired registration and searched it. Inside the backpack were eight large bags of suspected heroin and fentanyl and a bus ticket to New York. Tests on the seized substances by a Drug Enforcement Administration lab showed that they were approximately 390 grams of a heroin and fentanyl mixture.

Rondell Lawrence pleaded guilty in July and was sentenced to five years in prison on the same charge.