State prosecutors have indicted six people in Chatham County after uncovering a drug trafficking pipeline that investigators say ran from Phoenix, Arizona, to Savannah, and stretched deep into a local street gang's ranks. Law enforcement officers seized 20 pounds of the synthetic opioid carfentanil, a drug potent enough that traffickers allegedly intended to push it not just through Chatham County and across Georgia, but into the state's prisons as well.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr announced the indictment, which a Chatham County grand jury returned on September 2, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. The Office of the Georgia Attorney General laid out the alleged roles inside the operation in detail: Edkes Hakeem Mitchell, 34, of Savannah, is accused of serving as the primary narcotics source of supply, while Matthew Rigsby, 39, allegedly handled procurement and transportation. All five defendants named in that breakdown — Mitchell, Rondell Javon Owens, Rigsby, Rahemm Jawaun Jenkins, and Tashiylah Nikeairia Riley — are accused of participating in laundering money between Savannah and Phoenix.
Prosecutors say the broader group also brought marijuana into Chatham County from California and used multiple safe houses around Savannah to store and sell illegal drugs, according to the same FOX 5 Atlanta report. Owens, 33, Riley, 30, and Jenkins, 34, round out the list of Savannah residents named in the case alongside Mitchell and Rigsby.
Gang Ties Run Through East Savannah
The indictment alleges that four of the six defendants — Mitchell, Owens, Jenkins, and Devonta Rakeem Winn, 34, also of Savannah — are associated with the Waters Ave Crew, a street gang based in East Savannah. The Office of the Georgia Attorney General identified Mitchell and Owens specifically as high-ranking associates of the gang, which the indictment ties to the Piru Bloods, per FOX 5 Atlanta's reporting.
Mitchell alone faces 51 total counts stemming from the September 2 indictment, according to the Georgia Attorney General's Office. Those charges include three counts of violating Georgia's RICO Act, three counts under the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, 17 counts of drug conspiracy, two counts of drug attempt, and 26 counts of money laundering. Under that same Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, O.C.G.A. § 16-15-4, a gang activity conviction carries a mandatory additional penalty of 5 to 20 years in prison served consecutively to any sentence for the underlying felony, plus fines between $10,000 and $15,000, according to Williamson Legal.
Why Carfentanil Raises the Stakes
Investigators describe carfentanil as 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 10,000 times stronger than morphine, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. The drug was originally synthesized in 1974 and marketed starting in 1986 under the brand name Wildnil as an anesthetic for elephants and other large wildlife, with commercial veterinary production ending around 2003 before it resurfaced in illicit human drug markets, as detailed by Psychology Today.
The exact human lethal dose for carfentanil remains unknown due to its extreme toxicity, and exposure can cause rapid death within minutes, often requiring multiple doses of naloxone to reverse, according to public advisories from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. By contrast, fentanyl can be fatal to humans in the 2-milligram range. The multistate investigation traced the pipeline back to Phoenix, which the DEA's Phoenix Field Division flagged in August 2025 as a primary Southwest conduit for carfentanil, noting that 70 percent of that year's roughly 1 million seized carfentanil-laced pills were confiscated in a single month, as Hoodline reported in its story on the Phoenix carfentanil surge.
Part of a Statewide Crackdown
The Chatham County case fits into a broader push by Georgia's Gang Prosecution Unit, created July 1, 2022 by Governor Brian Kemp and Attorney General Carr. The unit has secured more than 140 convictions statewide as of July 2026 and has expanded from Atlanta into satellite offices in Savannah, Macon, Augusta, Albany, Columbus, and Southeast Georgia, according to the Office of the Georgia Attorney General. A statewide survey by the Georgia Gang Investigators Association estimated Georgia has roughly 127,732 known gang members and active associates across approximately 1,974 violent gangs, attributing about 65 percent of all crime in the state to gang activity as of 2026.
Locally, the case was handled through the Chatham-Savannah Counter Narcotics Team, a multi-jurisdictional task force combining personnel from the Savannah Police Department, the Chatham County Sheriff's Office, and surrounding municipal departments such as Thunderbolt, per the Town of Thunderbolt Police Department. Michael Sarhatt serves as director of that task force. Officials have not released bond details or trial dates for the six defendants, and it remains unclear whether additional arrests are expected in Arizona or California.
A Wider Pattern Along the Same Pipeline
This is not the first time investigators have traced carfentanil supply lines running out of the Southwest into the Southeast. Hoodline previously reported on an Arizona man mailing carfentanil pills to Birmingham, and on a similar multi-defendant carfentanil indictment tied to a Kansas City fentanyl ring. The drug has also resurfaced in other major markets, including a resurgence flagged by a DEA lab in Miami earlier this year.
