ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) —
A man who has already racked up numerous felony convictions pleaded guilty last week to gun and drug charges.
Brandon Mathews, 40, of Asheville, pleaded guilty Wednesday, May 29, 2024, to felony trafficking in opium/heroin and felony possession of a firearm by a felon and was sentenced to almost six years in prison, the Buncombe County District Attorney’s Office said Monday in a news release.
On Nov. 19, 2022, Asheville police officers were dispatched to 40 Merrimon Ave. in response to a suspicious vehicle that had been parked on the premises for more than six hours, according to the news release. Officers found Mathews in the vehicle and asked him to leave the premises. Witnesses and officers at the scene said Mathews appeared to be intoxicated and refused to leave, the news release said.
Mathews was arrested and searched. Officers found three plastic baggies in Mathews’ jacket pocket. Inside one of the baggies was a significant quantity of a white powdery substance suspected to be fentanyl. In a separate baggie was a white crystal substance suspected to be methamphetamine. In the third baggie were torn pieces of paper suspected to be drug paraphernalia, the news release said. Laboratory tests confirmed approximately 12 grams of a mixture containing methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Then on Dec. 20, 2022, Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office deputies stopped Mathews for driving on a revoked license. After a positive K9 alert for the presence of drugs on the driver’s side of the vehicle, deputies searched the vehicle. They found drug paraphernalia and a loaded ghost gun, the news release said.
Ghost guns are un-serialized and therefore untraceable firearms that are assembled with components purchased either as a kit or as separate pieces. North Carolina law prohibits convicted felons from possessing firearms.
The district attorney’s office said over the past two decades, Mathews has accumulated prior convictions of felony assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, felony breaking and entering, felony habitual misdemeanor assault, felony flee to elude arrest with a motor vehicle, felony larceny by employee and multiple domestic violence related convictions.
In these latest cases, Mathews was sentenced to serve 70-93 months in the custody of the Department of Adult Correction and pay a $50,000 fine.