76 arrested, guns and drugs seized in Fort Worth by feds using informants
Just before 1 p.m. on a Monday in early May, an undercover ATF special agent and a confidential informant arrived in a vehicle outside of the Delux Inn.
Darrick Carter was standing on the second-floor balcony overlooking the parking lot at the south Fort Worth motel.
Carter got in the car and explained that he could offer two sources of methamphetamine, to be sold at $150 per ounce. One of the sources, Maya Bradshaw, eventually directed the undercover agent and informant to Rocky’s, a store on Hemphill Street, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Worth.
From a person in a Kia Soul in the parking lot at Rocky’s, Bradshaw bought with government cash documented in advance about 51 grams of methamphetamine on behalf of the undercover agent, according to the complaint.
Carter and Bradshaw were paid a brokerage fee, authorities said.
The next day in Forest Hill, the undercover agent bought for $850 a Tec22 .22-caliber pistol from Charles Blackshire, Carter’s brother. Like any successful salesman, Blackshire skirted his product’s flaws. The pistol would shoot, Blackshire said, but had a little rust. With oil, it would be fine, the seller assured.
“That hoe been bussin,” Blackshire said, using slang to suggest that it had been an excellent gun, according to the complaint.
Carter, Bradshaw and Blackshire were among 76 people who were arrested during an operation carried out in April and May in Fort Worth by ATF and DEA special agents. The arrests on controlled substance distribution and firearms crimes were announced on Wednesday at a press conference.
The coordinated effort focused on five hotspots in Fort Worth where violent crime, fueled by the trafficking of illicit drugs and firearms, has flared.
Seized in Operation Showdown were 287 firearms and 22 kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl.
Three of the seized guns were connected to homicides, authorities said. The agents used recorded phone lines in the operation.
“The removal of 76 gun and drug traffickers from the streets will have a lasting impact on this city. They are no longer out there peddling their guns and their drugs, which would have led to more and more crime,” said Nancy Larson, the acting United States attorney in Dallas-Fort Worth.
The agents seized 147 small pieces of plastic or metal that transform a semiautomatic handgun into an automatic machine gun. Many users connect the device to a Glock pistol and are able then to fire multiple rounds with one squeeze of the trigger.
“If you attach one of those machine gun conversion devices into it, that’s when it’s shooting more than one round, which is considered a machine gun,” said Bennie Mims, the special agent in charge at the ATF Dallas field division.
Eight of the people who were arrested in the operation are alleged to be in the United States illegally. On May 21, those defendants intended to provide armed protection for what they believed to be a 50-kilogram methamphetamine transaction, law enforcement authorities allege in a complaint. It was a ruse arranged by agents. The defendants have been charged with firearm possession in furtherance of drug trafficking.
This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 4:42 PM.
