Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201270230
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE and VICTORIA RATCLIFF
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
LAX LAWS LURE GUNRUNNERS TO VA.
MANY TEEN-AGERS know how to turn a big profit illegally in Virginia. They buy handguns and sell them to out-of-state criminals, who often return to Virginia with drugs for sale.
Nassar Abdurraham made the mistake of using a friend's name to obtain a fake ID. If he hadn't, federal agents in Roanoke might never have broken a gun-trafficking ring run by teen-agers between Southwest Virginia and New York.
His case is one of dozens investigated by federal agents in which teen-agers and young adults traded Virginia guns for big-city drugs and money.
The gun trade has resulted in teen-age shootouts on the streets of Roanoke, guns in schools and on playgrounds, and money in the pockets of some teen-agers who see shooting people as simply part of doing business.
Guns and drugs go hand in hand. Although federal authorities don't keep statistics on cases involving juveniles, they say the number has gone up dramatically since crack cocaine appeared on the streets of Roanoke and Southwest Virginia in 1986.
Abdurraham and other teen-agers discovered they could make money selling easily obtainable Virginia guns to criminals in major cities on the East Coast, where handgun sales are strictly regulated. They add to their profit by bringing cheap drugs back from New York to sell. Virginia is the largest source of guns seized from criminals in Washington, D.C., and New York City, recent surveys by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms show.
Abdurraham was in high school in Brooklyn when he learned of the economic opportunity offered by Virginia's lax gun laws.
He knew about Virginia because the mother of one of his high school buddies lived in Martinsville.
The friend, Christopher Singletary, went to Martinsville to live after being convicted of drug dealing in New York. Abdurraham - like Singletary, a member of a violent gang called the Five Percenters - headed south last year for a visit.
Abdurraham also decided to take an older friend's identification papers, which he planned to use to get a false Virginia ID and then buy guns.
At 19, Abdurraham was too young to buy handguns: you have to be 21. He also didn't want anyone to know he was the person buying the weapons.
What he did not know was that the friend whose papers he brought with him, Aubyn R. Collins, was wanted in New York on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting a police officer.
Abdurraham also didn't know that federal firearms agents often start their days by routinely going through stacks of index cards that list people who have bought more than one handgun in a week from licensed dealers.
It is one of the few ways agents have of spotting gunrunners.
On April 13, 1990, Abdurraham walked into an office of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles with Collins' Social Security number and birth certificate. He said he lived in Martinsville in the home of Singletary's mother.
In a few minutes, he had a Virginia ID. After a short drive to a nearby gun store, he owned two small-caliber handguns.
By July 11, Abdurraham had bought 22 handguns, hitting almost every gun shop in the area.
The firepower of the weapons increased with each buy. His last buys included a MAC-11/9, a semiautomatic version of a submachine gun, with 100 rounds of ammunition, and a .44-caliber Bulldog "Son-of Sam" pistol with 90 rounds of ammunition.
On May 1, special federal firearms agent Tom Gallagher thumbed through a stack of documents listing multiple firearms purchases. He noticed that Aubyn R. Collins had bought four guns in Martinsville.
Gallagher grew suspicious because Collins was buying cheap handguns, the kind used in petty street crimes.
Gallagher ran Collins' name through a national crime computer and learned he was wanted in New York for assaulting an officer. That, coupled with the information that Collins now claimed Martinsville as his home, made Gallagher suspect that Collins might be running guns.
The agent also knew it might be a quick arrest because Collins clearly had broken a federal law making it illegal for fugitives to buy weapons.
Gallagher asked a friendly gun dealer in Martinsville to let him know the next time Collins came in. On July 11, the dealer called and said Collins was there. He agreed to delay the sale long enough for agents to drive down from Roanoke.
Agents arrested the man they presumed to be Collins as he came out of the store, and they charged him under a law that makes it illegal for a fugitive to buy a gun.
Agents wanted to prove that Collins was running guns, so they went to his Martinsville address to find out what was going on. There, they discovered that the man they had arrested was Nassar Abdurraham.
They eventually learned that one of the guns Abdurraham had taken from Martinsville to New York traded hands several times and was used in a street shooting that left one young New Yorker dead.
Abdurraham also had a list of fellow gang members and friends he had sold guns to. The list included the price he had paid for the guns and the amount he was paid for them. In some cases, he tripled his money.
Among those on the list was a person nicknamed "Dog," someone named Rose, guys named Les, Steve, Flip, Habib and Derrick.
Agents managed to find Derrick - Derrick Clark, 19.
From Clark, they learned that most of the people on the list were school friends of Abdurraham.
Agents said Clark told them that Abdurraham had gone from friend to friend, carrying a shopping-bag full of guns for sale. Clark said he paid $300 for a .32-caliber pistol that Abdurraham bought in Martinsville for $100.
Clark told agents he resold the gun to a guy named Dwight, who resold it to a young man named Franklin Jones. Jones used the gun in a shootout and lost - he was shot in the head on a New York street and died.
Authorities never recovered the .32-caliber pistol. But agents did find one of the guns Abdurraham bought - a .380 semiautomatic pistol. It passed through the hands of a few teen-agers, one of whom took it to a home economics classroom at Martinsville High School.
Abdurraham pleaded guilty last year to 13 counts of illegally purchasing firearms and is serving 18 months in a federal prison. He refused to testify against anyone he sold the guns to, saying that he was afraid he'd be killed.
Twenty-one of the guns he bought in Virginia are still unaccounted for.