Former ‘major’ fugitive who brought fentanyl to St. Louis gets life in prison


ST. LOUIS — A drug dealer from California who went on the run for three years after nearly being caught in Florissant with 59 pounds of fentanyl was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

Lawyers for 56-year-old Gerald Fitzgerald Hunter wanted 20 years in prison. Beau Brindley argued that Hunter would be in his 70s when released and said his organization was nonviolent, more like an “illegal business operation” than a street-level drug gang.


Assistant U.S. Attorney Erin Granger pointed out Hunter’s prior drug convictions stretching back to 1987 and said he began selling cocaine again in 2011, while barely out of prison.

In 2016, he switched to fentanyl because he could make more money and began selling 10 to 15 kilograms per month, she said.

Nine DEA agents and police task force officers swooped in at the Life Storage facility in Florissant, seizing two duffel bags containing 27 heat-sealed packages that totaled about 26.5 kilos of fentanyl. The drugs had been shipped to the St. Louis area from California in hidden compartments built into furniture.
Hunter, however, escaped by climbing a fence and running away barefoot.

Early the next morning, agents and police raided a series of locations in the St. Louis area, seizing $35,000, drug sales records, guns, drug paraphernalia, 10 pounds of marijuana and two presses used to make bricks of heroin or fentanyl.

Hunter was on the “major case fugitive” list until the U.S. Marshals tracked him to Los Angeles in 2020.

After his arrest, agents found guns, $220,000 in cash and “G-Code,” a screenplay about criminal life.
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