Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

WASHINGTON –Tyrone Hopkins, 25, of Washington, D.C., pled guilty today to a federal firearms charge stemming from his arrest last fall in a narcotics investigation, announced U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu, Thomas L. Chittum III, Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and Peter Newsham, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

Hopkins pled guilty in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. He is to be sentenced on Aug. 10, 2018, by the Honorable Amy Berman Jackson. Hopkins faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of life. He remains in custody pending sentencing.

According to the government’s evidence, Hopkins was arrested on Oct. 16, 2017, in the 1900 block of West Virginia Avenue NE after he and another man sold crack cocaine to an undercover MPD officer. When MPD officers arrested Hopkins, they discovered an additional amount of crack cocaine in his pocket and a loaded firearm tucked in his waistband. Hopkins had previously been convicted of a felony offense and was, at the time of his arrest, on pre-trial release for a pending drug charge in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

The firearm recovered from Hopkins was linked to a broader investigation into a firearms ring that acquired guns in Atlanta, Ga., and transported weapons into the District of Columbia for resale. According to the evidence, the gun in Hopkins’s possession was purchased by Jeremy Carr at a store in Smyrna, Ga. Carr, 34, of Marietta, Ga., has been indicted along with two co-defendants on federal charges in a separate case in the District of Columbia, including a charge of taking part in a conspiracy to engage in the business of dealing in firearms without a license. All three defendants have pled not guilty to charges and are awaiting further court proceedings.

According to court documents filed in the case against Carr, more than 20 firearms that Carr purchased have already been recovered in the District of Columbia.

These cases are being investigated by ATF and MPD. They are being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kevin L. Rosenberg and Gregory Rosen of the Violent Crime and Narcotics Trafficking Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

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