{"id":178618,"date":"2026-04-28T21:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/178618\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T21:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T21:17:09","slug":"man-in-us-illegally-gets-prison-for-fentanyl-near-allentown-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/178618\/","title":{"rendered":"Man in US illegally gets prison for fentanyl near Allentown school"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Dominican national has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for possessing and distributing fentanyl in Allentown, with prosecutors saying one of his stash houses was near an elementary school.<\/p>\n

Wilson Rosario, 36, also known as Joshua, was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge John M. Gallagher. In addition to the prison sentence, Rosario received 10 years of supervised release, a $3,000 fine and a $300 special assessment, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Rosario, who federal prosecutors say was living in the country illegally, was charged in May 2025 and pleaded guilty in January to drug distribution conspiracy, possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, and two counts of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a protected location, U.S. Attorney David Metcalf said.<\/p>\n

That location was Central Elementary School, which prosecutors say was across the street from a house where Rosario stashed \u201csignificant quantities\u201d of fentanyl.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe stored tens of thousands of doses of this deadly drug steps from an elementary school \u2014 and peddled that fentanyl to as many people as he could, profiting off the misery of addiction,\u201d Metcalf said in a news release.<\/p>\n

The investigation into Rosario began in April 2023<\/a>, and over the next several months agents with the state Bureau of Narcotics Investigation worked with a confidential informant to arrange purchases of fentanyl from Rosario, authorities said. That August, agents raided a residence in the 800 block of West Chew Street, across the street from Central Elementary and an adjoining playground.<\/p>\n

Agents seized nearly 300 grams of suspected fentanyl, equipment and other paraphernalia used for fentanyl distribution, according to Metcalf.<\/p>\n

A search warrant was also executed at an apartment used by Rosario on the 1300 block of West Chew Street, which is around 300 feet from Franklin Park. That search turned up more than four kilograms of suspected fentanyl, Narcan, a respirator, and empty vacuum seal bags, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

The searches at the two locations netted more than 4.2 kilograms of fentanyl, as well as a mixture of fentanyl and xylazine, a horse tranquilizer used as an illicit drug, according to testing by the Pennsylvania State Police Forensic Laboratory. An additional 62 grams of fentanyl was recovered from the undercover drug purchases.<\/p>\n

In addition to the state Bureau of Narcotics, the Lehigh County District Attorney\u2019s Office and Homeland Security Investigations investigated the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dominican national has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for possessing and distributing fentanyl in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[119,153,155,154,46,433,182,139,28,432],"class_list":["post-178618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-allentown","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-courts","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}