By John Annese
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Talk about a bad shot. A stray bullet that punched through a neighbor’s wall led police and the feds to find a suspected Brooklyn drug dealer’s stash of guns, cocaine and cash, prosecutors allege.
Trouble started mounting for 30-year-old Kevin Tapia on Nov. 17, when one of his Brooklyn neighbors on the third floor of their Bay Ridge apartment building heard a loud noise around 10:30 p.m.
The 40-year-old neighbor then noticed a hole in the wall of his apartment hallway, which abuts Tapia’s unit, and a bullet on the floor, according to a criminal complaint.
He called 911, and police responded to the building, at Parrott Place near 92nd St., shortly afterward.
When the cops arrived, they saw someone, believed to be Tapia, tossing a package out of a window, according to the complaint.
The receipt had Tapia’s name on it, and the package held more than a kilo of cocaine, the feds allege.
Tapia then tried to escape down the fire escape of the same window, but fell onto a second-floor landing, where even more drugs fell out of his pocket, the feds allege.
Cops got a search warrant and found a treasure trove of drugs, guns and ammo, including a duffel bag containing an AK-47 rifle and six handguns, all loaded, along with hundreds of bullets; plus a safe with nearly 2 kilos of cocaine, $107,000 cash and three handgun magazines.
They also found another 3 kilos of pot, nine oxycodone pills, two cash-counting magazines and a body-armor vest in the apartment, the complaint alleges.
Police hit Tapia with a slew of state charges after his arrest, including criminal possession of a weapon, drug possession, reckless endangerment and machine gun possession.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn stepped in and hit him with federal drug and gun charges, as well.
A federal judge on Friday ordered him held without bail at MDC Brooklyn jail.
Tapia’s lawyer didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment.
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