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NOTE: Original versions of this story identified Kevin Frye, 37, as wanted for two homicides based on information provided by local officials. Frye actually was wanted by federal authorities in the Southern District of New York in connection with the December indictment of a physician and 10 other people in a massive prescription Oxycodone ring. (MORE, below).
Kevin Frye (Courtesy: U.S. Attorney’s Office)
A team of U.S. Marshals armed with a warrant and accompanied by city officers around 8 a.m. went to a Coles Avenue apartment where the suspect, 37-year-old Kevin “Pretty Kev” Frye, was staying with a female acquaintance, Hackensack Police Director Michael Mordaga told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
Frye got into a Range Rover and was about to drive away when officers boxed him in with their vehicles, Mordaga said.
At that point, he “began driving the car forward and back, in drive and reverse, again and again, trying to ram his way out,” the director said.
Then the airbag deployed.
Frye got out and was immediately grabbed by two city officers but fought his way free. Officer Frankie Garrett’s hand went through the car window in the process. He was not seriously injured, the director said.
Frye ran north on Main Street toward Route 4 “where he ran right out of his boots,” Mordaga said.
He then crossed the highway to a string of stores on the opposite side and covered himself with brush near a brook, he said.
Bergen County K-9 Officer Stan Tovbin and Bandit joined Hackensack, New Milford, Paramus and River Edge officers in establishing a perimeter.
A short time later, a good Samaritan alerted police to an area off the side of the highway, and the K-9 chased the fugitive down.
Frye, who also was wanted on drug distribution charges, was taken in cuffs and shackles in the custody of the federal marshals to Hackensack University Medical Center with a bite on his ankle.
Two elementary schools, Fairmount in Hackensack and Cherry Hill in River Edge, were temporarily locked down as a precaution.
Federal authorities in New York City said the drug distribution ring operated out of medical clinics in Manhattan and the Bronx — including the office of a doctor who alone wrote more than 13,000 “medically unnecessary prescriptions for oxycodone in a two-year period,” resulting in the unlawful distribution of nearly 1.2 million Oxy tablets.
The scheme also involved drug traffickers who oversaw crews of “patients” sent into the clinics to obtain the prescriptions so the rugs could be obtained and resold, as well as clinic staff who profited by selling access to the physician, Moshe Mirilishvili.
The Oxycodone had a street value of $36 million — of which authorities said Mirilishvili pocketed more than $2.6 million in fees for “doctor visits.”
Nine people were arrested the morning that the Dec. 11 indictment was unsealed. Frey and another man had remained at large.
CLICK HERE for a copy of the U.S. District Court INDICTMENT
PHOTO: Courtesy NEWS12
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