{"id":190656,"date":"2026-03-13T20:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190656\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T20:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:34:07","slug":"former-hillsborough-teacher-sentenced-in-caribbean-gun-smuggling-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/190656\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Hillsborough teacher sentenced in Caribbean gun-smuggling operation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TAMPA, Fla. (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mysuncoast.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.mysuncoast.com\/\">WWSB<\/a>) &#8211; A former Hillsborough County high school teacher has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for helping to smuggle guns into Trinidad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Shannon Nicole Samlalsingh, 47, pleaded guilty in June to charges of conspiracy to make false statements to a firearms dealer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">According to court documents, Samlalsingh bought seven firearms for a Trinidad-based criminal organization. Samlalsingh falsely stated on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives forms that those firearms were for her. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">On April 21, 2022, Trinidad authorities seized a shipment from the U.S. containing two punching bags and other goods at Piarco International Airport. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Hidden inside was a large cache of weapons, including 9mm pistols, .38-caliber revolvers, a 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun, and parts and magazines for AR-style rifles, along with ammunition. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Samlalsingh had purchased four of the seized firearms: a SAR-9 9mm pistol, a Ruger-9 9mm pistol, a Taurus G3 9mm pistol, and a Taurus G2C 9mm pistol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WWSB. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. (WWSB) &#8211; A former Hillsborough County high school teacher has been sentenced to a year in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[629,89018,135,137,136,82531,6437],"class_list":["post-190656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-hillsborough","tag-samlalsingh","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-trinidad","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}