VERNON PARISH, La. (KALB) – Federal officials announced on February 9 that eleven people were indicted on ten counts of “Conspiracy to Possess a Controlled substance with Intent to Distribute” and two counts of “Unlawful Use of a Communication Facility” in connection with an alleged drug trafficking ring that operated across several Central Louisiana parishes, prominently based in Vernon Parish.

Those indicted individuals are:

• Detrail Harris
• Kameron Harris
• Barry Pearson
• Frank Coleman, Jr.
• Earl “Nook” Thompson
• Micheal Womack
• Sevesta Sweet
• Charles Jackson
• Andrew Bulloch
• Craig Hopkins
• Buford “Dog Pound” Sawyer

The indictment follows a nearly two-year investigation originally initiated by the Vernon Parish Sheriff’s Office and later assisted by these other agencies:

• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
• Rapides Area Drug Enforcement Unit (RADE)
• Department of Justice
• Leesville Police Department
• Alexandria Police Department
• Louisiana State Police
• Sabine Parish Sheriff’s Office
• Natchitoches Parish Sheriff’s Office
• United States Marshall
• Pineville Police Department
• U.S. Forestry Service
• Army Criminal Division
• Criminal Investigations, FBI New Orleans
• Texas law enforcement

Officials confirm law enforcement seized, through a search warrant, a total of one kilogram of cocaine, 25 pounds of meth, 2,000 fentanyl pills, $125,000 in cash and various gold bars. When questioned on the believed “street value” of the contraband, officials stated they could not create an estimate due to the unknown concentration of fentanyl within the substances.

According to court documents, law enforcement believes the alleged contraband distribution conspiracy began no later than July 11, 2024, and continued through to November 2, 2025, and ranged from the Central Louisiana region and spanning as far south as Lafayette.

“We know that those pills were going to be distributed throughout Central and South Louisiana. At a certain stage of this investigation, we executed search warrants on some of the residences of some of these alleged ‘DTO’ members, and we found those pills and we knew that from our intelligence gathering that those pills were going to be distributed between South and Lafayette, the Broussard area of Louisiana, all the way up to Central Louisiana.”

During a press conference, federal officials stated they believe the alleged ring was directly involved with South and Central American drug rings, directly naming the criminal “Gulf Cartel.”

“Intelligence led us to one neighborhood gang here that used the Gulf Cartel as its supplier of deadly, illegal drugs,” said Jonathan Tapp, a special agent for the FBI office based in New Orleans. “We will fight the influence of these foreign organizations, and we will not let them gain a foothold in central Louisiana…We will combat them at their points of origin, at the border, and in our local communities.”

An executive order passed by President Donald Trump in January 2025 labeled organizations such as the Gulf Cartel as terroristic and paved the way for the formation of the U.S. Homeland Security Task Force, a key proponent for the investigation.

“That task force was tasked with bringing the full investigative and prosecutorial resources of the United States to combat the influence of these foreign cartels,” Murphy explained.

“Mexican drug cartels and violent gangs don’t limit their activity to the big cities, but you can be sure that we are focused on these drug cartels and violent gangs wherever they are operating all over the country and the world.”

Involved sheriffs such as Rapides Parish’s Mark Wood, Vernon’s Sam Craft and Grant’s Steven McCain all emphasized the importance of having both state, local and federal officials involved in the investigation, labeling it as ‘extraordinary.’

“I’m hoping that the public will see the combined efforts of multiple agencies being involved in what it can do when everybody works together,” Craft said.

View the full indictment below:

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