Harris Teeter manager caught ‘running a gun pipeline’ out of North Carolina, feds say

Hayley Fowler
·2 min read

A 37-year-old Harris Teeter manager in North Carolina spent six years buying guns from local stores before selling them out of state, federal prosecutors say.

Now he’s going to prison.

William John Shaw Jr. — who has worked as the co-manager of a Harris Teeter in Raleigh since 2016 — was sentenced Tuesday to two-and-a-half years in prison on charges of making false statements while purchasing firearms, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

“William Shaw was running a gun pipeline between here and Washington. But, no more,” U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. said in the release. “The people of the Eastern District as well as the people of Washington are safer now because his pipeline has been shut down.”

Shaw was charged in federal court in December. He pleaded guilty to all eight counts of making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm in February.

In addition to being sentenced to 30 months in prison by a federal judge on Tuesday, Shaw faces two years of supervised release.

From 2013 to 2019, prosecutors said Shaw bought firearms — mostly handguns — from stores and pawn shops in Wake and Johnston counties while claiming to be the sole buyer.

When filling out a firearms transaction record for each gun, Shaw also reportedly stated he was not purchasing them for another person.

He then sold them to family members and strangers in Washington D.C. and Maryland, prosecutors said.

According to the release, Shaw “made unprotected admissions to ATF agents that he purchased and sold approximately 30 to 40 firearms to relatives and other unknown individuals.”

They included multiple Glocks and at least one Ruger, court documents show.

The judge recommended he serve his sentence at the federal correctional complex in Butner, where one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks at a federal prison has been reported. At least eight inmates had died as of May 19, The News & Observer reported.