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Austin Hunter, a/k/a “Malik,” age 43, of Amityville, was convicted by a jury in November, on numerous counts of drug sales and possession, was sentenced on Tuesday, Feb. 23 to prison time in addition to five years of post-release supervision, said Suffolk County District Attorney Timothy D. Sini.
in April 2019, Suffolk County police officers responded to a suspected fatal overdose in Copiague. The Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner determined that the cause of death was a fentanyl overdose.
An analysis of the overdose victim's cell phone, which was recovered from the scene, revealed evidence that he had purchased narcotics from Hunter.
In May 2019, law enforcement agents from the Long Island Heroin Task Force conducted a covert operation to purchase narcotics from Hunter. He was arrested upon his arrival at the agreed-upon location.
“Whenever there is a fatal overdose in Suffolk County, we treat it as a homicide and immediately take investigative steps to identify the drug dealer responsible,” Sini said. “With today’s sentence, we are not just ensuring that he is held accountable and is no longer peddling deadly fentanyl in our community, but sending a message to other drug dealers that they will get caught and go to prison."
The case marks the first conviction in Suffolk County history for a criminal sale of a controlled substance based upon a toxicology analysis as opposed to the physical recovery of narcotics, Sini said.
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