Gun Trafficking College Student Gets 10 Years

A college student was busted for selling 73 weapons and high-capacity magazines to undercover officers. -Photo Bronx DA

By Dan Gesslein 

Bronx Voice 

November 16, 2022

BRONX - A former college student was sentenced to 10 years in prison for trafficking guns and high-capacity magazines from Tennessee to neighborhoods in the Bronx and Manhattan.

Shakor Rodriguez, 23, was sentenced to 10 years for trafficking 73 weapons and high-capacity magazines throughout the Bronx and Manhattan.

“The defendant, who was a college student at the time in Tennessee, trafficked semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines from the south to New York City,” said Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark. “He brought some of the weapons in duffle bags by bus and then sold them to an undercover NYPD officer. The illegal influx of guns threatens the safety of Bronxites. I thank our partners at the NYPD for intercepting these guns before they ended up on our streets.”

Investigators said Rodriguez would run the guns from his college town in Tennessee to his home neighborhood on Weeks Avenue in Mount Eden section of the Bronx as well as Allen Street outside Little Italy in Manhattan.

Rodriguez would store the guns in duffle bags and in some case rode a bus up from Tennessee to NYC.

Rodriguez was busted as part of an undercover investigation dubbed “Operation Overnight Express,” a joint investigation by the NYPD Firearms Investigations Unit and the Bronx District Attorney’s Violent Criminal Enterprise Bureau.

According to prosecutors as part of the investigation, Rodriguez, also known as Sha, sold 73 weapons to an undercover officer between July 17, 2020 and December 22, 2021. Of the weapons sold 59 of the guns were loaded. He also sold high-capacity magazines including multiple “drum” magazines. The undercover cop paid between $1,000 to $1,500 per gun.