(WXYZ) — There's a cycle of violence and crime in West Virginia that far too often occurs at the hands of people from Detroit.
DEA Detroit field office's Assistant Special Agent in Charge Kent Kleinschmidt says the connection goes back more than a decade.
“We’ve been aware of the pipeline between Detroit and West Virginia for a long time," Kleinschmidt said. "It’s primarily opioids. Be it prescription pills, heroin, heroin Fentanyl,"
The city of Huntington, West Virginia, is widely considered the hardest hit by the influx of drugs from the Motor City. It likely played a factor in one of it’s most notorious unsolved mass murders: 4 teens ages 16 to 19, shot and killed in a driveway in the early morning hours after prom night in 2005.
"It affects both communities," Kleinschmidt said. "The violence that it brings here to Detroit with the source and supply section, and then it brings this – the drugs and the violence down into West Virginia where they’re not used to that."
The Detroit - West Virginia connection made headlines recently. The suspect in the murder of 19-year-old Tymarian Tiller was arrested on heroin charges in West Virginia.
“I just can't wait until I can face him and ask him why,” said TIller's mother, Markeila Parker.
Street value of narcotics is what the DEA points to as the origin of the Detroit to West Virginia pipeline.
"They can get double the money down in West Virginia," Kleinschmidt said. "So if you take a prescription pill here in Detroit that’s worth $20 on the street and you transfer it down, or you bring it down to the West Virginia area, it’s worth $40. If you travel six hours south you're doubling your profits."
In 2018, there was a major disruption to the pipeline when a joint operationdismantled the "Peterson Brothers" distribution network resulting in 15 individual prison sentences.
In September of 2019, the arrest of a Detroit man for a fatal hit-and-run.
In December, a Detroit man shot and killed in Huntington, just days before Huntington’s second mass shooting with a Detroit connection. Seven people were shot inside a hookah bar on New Year's Eve that launched a manhunt for Detroit’s Most Wanted.
“This could’ve been a tremendous disaster beyond the seven who were shot. And this was a night supposedly of celebration," said Mike Stuart, US Attorney for the Southern District.
The DEA says the goal is to cut off the pipeline at the head before the drugs can reach West Virginia. They confirm it is an uphill battle that requires help from the public who see the problem and can alert authorities.
Huntington's Interim Police Chief Ray Cornwell says the drug issue is not a Detroit issue alone. Akron, Ohio and Macon, Georgia, are just some of the other sources fueling the epidemic.
