Tekashi69 Kidnapper Supplied Drugs By NYC Jail Official, Feds Say

New York City NY

04 November, 2021

4:14 PM

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NEW YORK CITY — Tekashi69's kidnapper was supplied drugs in jail by a Manhattan prison official who now faces criminal charges for smuggling contraband into the facility, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. Metropolitan Correctional Center unit secretary Sharon Griffith-McKnight stands accused of vouching in court for rappernapper Anthony Ellison by touting his "tremendous leadership qualities," according to an indictment unsealed Thursday. "At the time Griffith was smuggling to Ellison contraband," the indictment states. "[She] therefore knew that Ellison was not, in fact, a 'model inmate,'" Griffith-McKnight and Ellison are among 11 people — including corrections officers Perry Joyner and Mario Feliciano — charged with smuggling drugs, alcohol and cellphones to inmates, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced. Federal prosecutors contend the smuggling scheme lasted from October 2019 to January 2021 and involved tens of thousands of dollars, Oxycodone, synthetic cannabis, and Naloxone, the medicine that reverses opioid overdoses. "The defendants allegedly engaged in an extensive scheme to introduce dangerous contraband into MCC New York," Department of Justice Special Agent-in-Charge Ryan T. Geach said, "Threatening the safety and security of the institution, inmates, staff, and the public." A jury convicted Ellison in 2019 of kidnapping Daniel "Tekashi69" Hernandez at gunpoint on Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy's Atlantic Avenue border the year before, according to reports. Ellison was sentenced in 2020 by Judge Paul Engelmayer, who said he was impressed by reports submitted by Griffith McKnight of his good behavior at the Manhattan Correctional Center, the indictment shows. Replied the judge, "Unless this is some sort of Grisham novel, and people are all corrupt and making all of this up about [Ellison], it seems to me that it's unavoidable that [Ellison's] trajectory at the MCC contains a lot of good."