A Holly Hill house that Volusia County deputies raided less than a month ago got hit again this week, and this time investigators say they caught the same man allegedly running the operation trying to flush trafficking amounts of fentanyl and cocaine down a toilet. Anthony Ridley, 63, of Daytona Beach, was arrested at 819 State Ave. and is now held without bond on a long list of drug charges.
According to the Volusia County Sheriff's Office, deputies raided the exact same address less than a month after a similar search warrant was carried out there, with the agency saying Ridley returned to “business as usual” almost as soon as he got out of jail, as reported by WKMG ClickOrlando. The first raid at the State Avenue house happened on September 15, when the Holly Hill Police Department and the Volusia Sheriff's Office SWAT team served a search warrant and arrested four people on narcotics charges tied to Ridley's alleged distribution of fentanyl and crack cocaine, according to the Holly Hill Police Department.
This time around, the response was even bigger. The October raid drew a joint response from the Volusia Sheriff's Office SWAT team, the East Volusia Narcotics Task Force, the Volusia Bureau of Investigation, and the county's Overdose Task Force, per the Volusia Sheriff's Office. WKMG reports that when the SWAT team confronted Ridley inside, he reportedly tried to flush fentanyl and cocaine down a toilet before investigators recovered trafficking amounts of both drugs. Ridley and two others were arrested in the raid, and the sheriff's office shared footage of the operation.
A Long Rap Sheet on State Avenue
This isn't Ridley's first run-in with Holly Hill nuisance-house allegations. Court and news records reported by the Daytona Beach News-Journal in 2020 show Ridley, who goes by the street alias “Hard White,” was previously arrested that year for running a nuisance drug house while out on bail for a prior drug house offense, according to the Daytona Beach News-Journal. That history points to a pattern of alleged drug-house management stretching back more than six years.
Ridley now faces a stack of charges stemming from the latest arrest, including fentanyl trafficking, cocaine trafficking, tampering with evidence, possession and/or use of drug equipment, three counts of possessing a controlled substance without a prescription, owning or renting a structure to knowingly sell drugs, and sale or possession with intent to sell within 1,000 feet of a place of worship or business, per WKMG's reporting.
What Florida's Trafficking Thresholds Mean for Ridley
The weight of what investigators found matters enormously under Florida law. Trafficking in fentanyl is triggered at just 4 grams, carrying a 7-year mandatory minimum, while 14 to 28 grams brings a 20-year mandatory minimum and anything over 28 grams mandates a 25-year sentence, according to Florida Statute 893.135 as detailed by Meltzer & Bell. Cocaine trafficking kicks in at 28 grams under the same statute, carrying a mandatory minimum of 3 years and a $50,000 fine for quantities between 28 and 200 grams, regardless of whether prosecutors can prove intent to sell, per Moses & Rooth. Together, the statutes mean Ridley could be looking at decades behind bars if convicted.
Part of a Wider Crackdown in Volusia County
The back-to-back raids at 819 State Ave. fit into a much larger pattern of aggressive narcotics enforcement across Volusia County this year. In July, the Volusia Sheriff's Office and federal law enforcement agencies wrapped up Operation Holy Rollers, executing 50 search warrants countywide to dismantle fentanyl distribution networks linked to multiple overdose deaths, including a raid at a Holly Hill property, according to the Volusia Sheriff's Office. Another sweep, 49 Nabbed in Five-County Sweep, charged 49 people across Volusia, Flagler, St. Johns, Marion, and Orange counties with running fentanyl and cocaine networks, including long-term surveillance of a Holly Hill property tied to daytime drug sales.
Holly Hill's State Avenue corridor itself has a long history with narcotics units. Back in October 2023, East Volusia Narcotics Task Force detectives served a search warrant at a commercial address at 1516 State Ave., seizing 729 grams of cocaine and 276 grams of fentanyl, the Volusia Sheriff's Office previously reported. Deputies have also used civil nuisance abatement to shut down other problem properties in the city, including a Flomich Street residence where undercover buy operations and search warrants led to six arrests after city officials went to court to have the house declared a chronic public nuisance.
The tactic of early-morning SWAT raids against suspected drug houses has shown up elsewhere in the region too. In March, Volusia County deputies executed a similar search warrant at a suspected drug house on Madison Avenue in neighboring Daytona Beach, seizing more than 800 grams of cocaine, $10,000 in cash, and firearms, as Hoodline reported in Madison Avenue Drug Den Cracked. What remains unclear in this case is how Ridley was able to return to the same house and allegedly resume drug operations less than four weeks after the first SWAT raid there.
