$200,000 in heroin seized by police

Daquan Baylor

A six-month joint investigation into heroin distribution in Mercer County led to the arrest last week of a Ewing man and the seizure of about $200,000 worth of heroin.

Detectives said they identified Ewing resident Daquan Baylor as a person responsible for bringing large quantities of heroin to Mercer County from Philadelphia. Last week, authorities executed numerous search warrants in two states. Five people, including Baylor, were arrested.

On April 3, surveillance officers in Philadelphia observed Cristian Baez-Belliard exit a house on Tampa Street concealing a large item underneath his jacket. He entered a silver Nissan Sentra. Officers followed the vehicle to Suburban Plaza on Scotch Road in Ewing, where Baylor allegedly arrived in a white Nissan Sentra to meet him. Officers detained Baylor and Baez-Belliard after observing them exchange suspected drugs.

After obtaining search warrants for both vehicles, officers allegedly located 150 bricks of heroin inside of a plastic bag on the front seat of Baylor’s Sentra. A hidden compartment used to hide narcotics and money was also found within the vehicle, but the compartment was empty. A plastic bag containing $20,980 in cash was located on the front passenger side floor of Baez-Belliard’s vehicle, which also had a hidden compartment.

Officers said they located a heroin “mill” containing about  819 grams of suspected heroin, 15 bricks (750 bags) of suspected heroin, 12 grams of fentanyl and numerous items utilized for packaging and distributing heroin, at the Tampa Street house in Philadelphia. Jonathan Nunez-Cordero, 25, Armando Santos, 20, and Yoncarlo Nunez-Cordero, 21, were arrested at this location. All three were charged with numerous narcotic-related offenses and are in a Pennsylvania jail pending future court proceedings. Baylor, 26, and Baez-Belliard, 25, were each charged with possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession with the intent to distribute. The prosecutor’s office has filed a motion to detain Baylor. Baez-Belliard was released pending future court proceedings.

The charges are the result of an investigation by the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation and Drug Control, the Drug Enforcement Administration HIDTA 4, the New Jersey State Police, and the Ewing, Hamilton, Princeton and Trenton police, under the command of the prosecutor’s Special Investigations Unit.

“As the opioid addiction crisis continues to escalate across the country, I want these drug dealers to be on notice that we are going to fight in Mercer County,” Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri said. “We are going to use every possible avenue to respond to the heroin epidemic and it is through cooperative investigations like this that we can unite with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners to stop the flow of poison into our communities.”