BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. – A North Charleston career drug dealer will spend nearly three decades behind bars after a Berkeley County jury convicted him of trafficking a cocktail of deadly narcotics, including enough fentanyl to kill thousands.
Cory Gethers, who’s been racking up drug convictions since 1995, was nailed after deputies pulled him over around 1 a.m. on Jan. 31, 2024. What started as a routine traffic stop on a dark Moncks Corner road ended with a stash that looked like Halloween candy but was anything but sweet.
Cops spotted a baggie of white powder near the driver’s seat and glass pipes in plain view. A deeper search turned up a big Jolly Rancher candy bag stuffed with dozens of smaller baggies filled with hard drugs hidden under the cup holders.
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The haul: 37 grams of fentanyl, 52 grams of cocaine, 27 grams of meth, and 12 grams of crack cocaine — 128 grams in all.
Investigators also seized Gethers’ phone, which contained a video showing off the very hiding spot where the stash was found. Prosecutors said that footage torpedoed his claim that he didn’t know the drugs were in the car.
“This was no mistake,” Assistant Solicitor Adam Carr said, noting the fentanyl alone represented more than 18,000 lethal doses.
Judge Milton Kimpson threw the book at Gethers, sentencing him to 27 years on the fentanyl charge, with 20 years apiece on the other counts, all running together.
Gethers’ rap sheet already included nine drug convictions, with arrests for crack cocaine stretching back three decades.
Assistant Solicitors Carr and Kawohi Morris praised the instincts of Deputy Hunter Rogers, whose stop led to the bust. “Solid police work kept deadly doses off our streets,” Carr said.
Now, instead of cruising the Lowcountry’s back roads, Gethers is headed for a long ride straight to state prison.
