Wilmington man sentenced to more than 5 years in prison for trafficking cocaine, heroin

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — A Wilmington man has been sentenced to prison for drug offenses.

Rodney Nixon, 46, pled guilty Monday to one count of Trafficking in Cocaine and one count of Possession with Intent to Sell and Deliver Heroin.

Nixon was sentenced to the mandatory term of 70 months minimum and 93 months maximum in the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction, and also imposed the statutorily mandated drug trafficking fine of $50,000.

On August 1, 2017, officers with the Wilmington Police Department conducted a traffic stop on a green Honda Odyssey Nixon was driving on the 600 block of North 6th Street in Wilmington.

At time, this defendant was a primary subject of a lengthy narcotics investigation that WPD Vice and Narcotics Detectives had been conducting. A canine was brought to the scene to perform a dog sniff on the vehicle. After the canine positively alerted for the presence of narcotics in the vehicle, a probable cause search of the vehicle was performed.

Officers did not locate any narcotics in the passenger area of the vehicle, but they did find three magnetic keys consistent with those used to open hidden compartments in the vehicle commonly used to store narcotics. Based on this discovery, a search warrant was obtained for that vehicle so a more thorough search of it could be conducted.

Detectives found a hidden compartment under the front passenger floorboard that contained $11,140 of U.S. currency and a plastic bag that contained 421.76 grams of powder cocaine, a trafficking amount, as well as 25.89 grams of crack cocaine, and 449 bindles of heroin.

Crime Scene Investigators were then able to lift a fingerprint off the plastic bag that contained the narcotics. The fingerprint conclusively matched the print on the right index finger of Nixon.