A 24-year-old Wilson man known on the street as “Mthang” is headed to federal prison for nearly 12 years after investigators found him with a loaded handgun and dozens of methamphetamine pills inside a house connected to a wave of gang shootings across the city. Mijuel Taylor was convicted of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, authorities said.
Officers found Taylor with the loaded handgun and more than 48 pills containing methamphetamine during a July 2024 search of a Wilson residence, according to wcti12.com. Federal prosecutors said the search was part of a larger investigation into at least 12 gang-related shootings in Wilson tied to a rivalry between two local gangs. U.S. District Judge Louise W. Flanagan imposed the sentence, and the case was investigated jointly by the FBI’s Raleigh Durham Safe Streets Task Force and the Wilson Police Department.
According to the FBI Charlotte
field office, the case grew out of that joint task force and police effort, and the bureau said simply on social media that “a man will spend 12 years in federal prison for gun and drug charges.” The prosecution was brought as part of the Justice Department’s Operation Take Back America initiative, per the same account from wcti12.com.
A City Still Reeling From a Summer of Gunfire
The shootings tied to Taylor’s case weren’t an isolated spasm of violence. Wilson saw at least 12 gang-related shootings occur in less than one month during a spike the previous summer, according to the Wilson Times. Around that same period, police made eight arrests in connection with shootings. Police at the time said several shots-fired calls were related to gang activity and that investigators had identified individuals responsible for the events.
Taylor’s case is not the only one to emerge from that crackdown. Joshua Elijah Strickland, 22, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, the Wilson Times reported. That case traced back to a Wilson Police Department search of a house where Strickland and other gang members allegedly stored guns and drugs following a shooting on June 26, 2024.
Investigators Link Taylor to Gang Conflict
Officials tied Taylor’s arrest directly to the broader gang conflict, reporting that firearms tied to the gang-related shootings were stored at the same Wilson residence where he was found.
In a separate case, Kendrick Taiwan Taylor, 43, was sentenced to 180 months in prison and five years of supervised release for firearms offenses tied to drug dealing, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina. State data has also pointed to broader firearm-violence concerns in North Carolina’s rural counties, which reported the highest levels of firearm violence between 2020 and 2024, including homicide, suicide, nonfatal shootings and unintentional firearm deaths, according to the North Carolina Department of Public Safety.
