Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced a gun trafficking case at a news conference, detailing how a group of defendants allegedly moved illegal firearms into New York City. According to the prosecutor, the defendants acted in concert to sell 45 firearms and ammunition worth more than $46,000 to undercover NYPD detectives across five separate sales.
Officials said the weapons were trafficked up what is known as the iron pipeline, the route through which illegal guns flow into New York from states with looser firearm laws. On several occasions, one of the defendants allegedly took the bus up from Georgia carrying the guns to sell to an undercover detective, repeatedly bringing weapons into the city.
Some of the firearms were allegedly equipped with rapid-fire modification devices, which can dramatically increase how quickly a weapon fires. Bragg credited the work of undercover NYPD detectives for intercepting the sales, saying that because the detectives made the purchases themselves, the weapons in this case never hit the streets of the city.
The sales were not carried out in a dark warehouse on the edge of the city, the district attorney noted. Some of them occurred literally blocks from where he was speaking, in the heart of Chinatown. Two of the defendants also allegedly helped carry out sales in Brooklyn, placing the trafficking activity in the middle of busy neighborhoods.
Among those charged, one defendant was identified as Daniel Jolly, the father of another defendant, Vern Jolly, while another of the accused also lives in Georgia. The case ties together individuals operating between the two states as part of the alleged scheme to funnel firearms north into New York.
According to the district attorney, Vern Jolly and Daniel Jolly were arraigned in Supreme Court on June 17th on the indictment charges. Vern Jolly was remanded into custody, while Daniel Jolly is being held on bail, as the prosecution moves forward against the defendants named in the case.
Bragg warned that, had these firearms fallen into the wrong hands, they could have fueled violence that seriously injured or even killed New Yorkers. He also pointed to broader efforts against illegal guns, noting that a couple of weeks earlier, in partnership with the NYPD, authorities recovered 147 illegal firearms at a gun buyback on the Upper West Side. The investigation remains ongoing.