Tag: cocaine distribution

Parked outside the Charlotte Dowd YMCA, Antoine Turner reached into the backseat of his Chevrolet Camaro, past his five-year-old daughter and toward a Nike shoebox.

It held a kilogram of cocaine, court records show.

Turner, 46, handed it over to an unnamed person in exchange for a $10,000 down payment, according to court records. Later, he got $11,000 more.

Federal agents had funded it all, Turner later learned.

After working with the confidential informant, officials charged Turner with distributing cocaine at the YMCA just south of uptown on Feb. 15, 2023. Eight months later, agents set up a similar scheme outside the family-friendly, Christian-centered fitness center. That time, they charged Brian Ball in an unrelated fentanyl distribution case.

Drug deals outside Down YMCA

Turner pleaded guilty to distributing cocaine and was sentenced to two years in prison in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina Wednesday.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn, Turner’s daughter, now 7, said she knew her dad was sorry and that she misses his cooking.

Dutch, the family dog, misses him, too, she wrote.

Hours after officials ushered Turner, who said he was too nervous to speak in court, out of the courtroom and back into handcuffs, Ball took his place.

The 44-year-old pleaded guilty to distributing six ounces of fentanyl. He tearfully apologized to Cogburn, his parents and his daughter, who was also in court.

Ball’s attorney told the judge that the confidential informant who asked him for the fentanyl was “like a brother” to Ball, and he thought the fentanyl would be used to ease him off his addiction. But the FBI had funded that $5,400 deal, too.

“You have to choose your mistakes wisely,” Cogburn said before allowing Ball to speak to his daughter.

“I love you. It’s OK, baby,” Ball said, speaking across four rows filled with teary-eyed family.