Man gets probation, jail, fine on drug charges

WILLMAR — Tony Gerrero Jr., 19, of Willmar, was sentenced Thursday to 90 days in jail, a total of $3,000 in fines and 20 years of probation on a third-degree drug sale charge for selling methamphetamine to CEE-VI Drug Task Force agents on multiple occasions in the fall of 2011 and to a fifth-degree drug possession charge for possessing narcotic pain pills while he was attempting to swindle agents in a bogus drug deal last March.
As part of his sentence handed down in Kandiyohi County District Court by District Judge Michael J. Thompson, Gerrero was ordered to follow the recommendations of a chemical use assessment and not to use or possess alcohol or drugs. As part of a plea agreement, the third-degree sale charge was lowered from first-degree level.
The drug sale charge was filed after Gerrero sold informants a total of 13.9 grams of methamphetamine between Oct. 27 and Dec. 13, 2011. The five separate deals included sales that occurred in vehicles in the area of 10th Street and Minnesota Avenue Southwest, with one of the sales completed in a church parking lot at the corner of 12th Street and Kandiyohi Avenue Southwest.
The drug possession and swindle charges were filed after March 27, when Gerrero informed a drug task force agent that he could purchase 10 pills for $40. He was set up as an informant and given drug task force funds that were recorded. While he was under surveillance by agents, Gerrero parked his vehicle along 15th Avenue Southwest and went behind a building used by the cemetery there. The agents didn’t see anyone else in the area and noted that it was unlikely someone could walk through the thick foliage behind the building.
Gerrero later turned over 10 pills of acetaminophen with codeine and claimed a man named “Johnny” sold him the pills. When he was questioned, with the agents noting that they saw no one else at the site of the sale, he removed the $40 from his sock and admitted to planting the drugs at the location. The money was identified as the previously recorded bills.