One was a former Rock Hill schoolboy football star who dreamed of major college gridiron greatness, according to his lawyer. Thomas Anthony Perry made headlines at Rock Hill High as a star defensive end who played varsity for four years, but the lure of easy drug money hooked him to help dealers afterward to sell a drug called fentanyl.
The other, who prosecutors said in court had been involved with drugs in York County since his teen years, had his own dope dealing organization. Javaris Latrey Johnson had people working for him selling narcotics until he went in on what was seemingly a sweetheart deal with others to make phony prescription pills with illegal fentanyl that officials say is the most dangerous street drug in the world.
It all crashed down in October 2022 as South Carolina drug agents broke in the door of a mobile home turned drug lab along the Lake Wylie shore within sight of Charlotte. There was so much fentanyl in the trailer — 60 pounds and 150,000 pills — it filled part of the bathtub and the toilet as the crew unsuccessfully tried to flush the evidence away. It turned out to be the largest seizure ever in York County and possibly the state of South Carolina.
Two-plus years later on Thursday, they learned in U.S. District Court in Columbia how much prison time fentanyl drug dealers get in South Carolina’s federal court.
Judge Sherri Lydon sentenced Perry, 32, to 97 months — just over eight years. She dropped 151 months — over 12 years — on Johnson, 37. Each could have faced up to life in prison for conspiracy to deal the drugs.
“This was a death factory,” Lydon said in court of the York County mobile home turned drug lab. “You put the lives of the community at risk.”
After a news conference about the arrest and seizure in 2022, South Carolina officials, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, said the 60-plus pounds of fentanyl taken from the trailer was enough to kill the entire 5 million-plus population of the state. Fentanyl is around 50 times more potent than heroin and has been a part of overdose deaths across the country.
The two men sentenced Thursday are four of the five people from around Rock Hill who ran the secret drug lab along the lake. Lydon sentenced Timario Gayton, 33, and Quonzy Hope, 36, last month to 15 years each for their roles.
Timario Gayton’s twin brother Timothy Gayton, whom prosecutors say was the leader of the cabal, has yet to be sentenced.
Perry was not a kingpin in the drug scheme at the lake.
His role was as a lookout and underling who did the bidding of those higher up, according to statements made in court by lawyers in the case. Perry did what the Gayton brothers told him to do, said federal prosecutor Elizabeth Major of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Yet even as a lower level player, Perry had his own drug customers, Major said.
Victor Li, Perry’s lawyer, said in court documents that Perry had sports dreams of college football after he was a four-year varsity starter at Rock Hill High School. But an injury halted the sports dream, and the people Perry hooked up with after turned it into a nightmare.
The Gayton brothers were “on the radar” of local drug agents when the mobile home was raided, Li said, but Perry was just caught up in their orbit.
Perry apologized in court in front of dozens of members of his family who were in tears as a crying Perry asked them to forgive him.
“I didn’t grow up like this,” Perry said. “I let y’all down. I am sorry.”
Perry said he “made a terrible mistake” when he started hanging around Rock Hill drug dealers.
“I just wanted to be around the cool kids,” he explained to the judge.
Johnson was the “brains and the organizer” of the drug lab near the lake, according to Major, the prosecutor.
Johnson had other drug convictions before he started dealing drugs again on a large scale, Major said. He also had a separate drug organization before getting involved in the fentanyl scheme with the others, including Hope and the Gaytons, Major said. Johnson found the mobile home near the lake to use to press the pills, she said.
“This was a business merger,” Major told Judge Lydon of Johnson joining forces with the Gaytons from Rock Hill.
Seth Rose, Johnson’s lawyer, said Johnson was raised in York County in a rough environment without a father present and where drugs and gangs were prevalent.
“He turned to life on the streets, where people led him down the path,” Rose told Lydon.
Like Perry, Johnson had been in jail without bail for over two years since his arrest. Many family members were in court to support him.
Johnson said in court he wanted to apologize. Then Judge Lydon asked him “Just what are you apologizing for?”
Johnson put it out there: “For the drugs, the drugs on the street,” Johnson said.
He said there is a better way to live than what he did involving drugs and weapons.
“Being in the street, dealing drugs and guns, isn’t it,” Johnson said.
Four of the five people involved have been sentenced. The Herald has been the only media at the sentencing hearings.
Timothy Gayton pleaded guilty to two separate federal cases involving the drug scheme and faces sentencing later this year.
He pleaded guilty in November to aiding and abetting the distribution of 400 grams of fentanyl while he was jailed on the original conspiracy charge, according to prosecutors and documents. He has also pleaded guilty to drug conspiracy from the Lake Wylie drug lab.
He faces 10 years in prison to life.