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West Mifflin man sentenced to over 16 years in prison for federal firearms, drug trafficking charges

WEST MIFFLIN, Pa. — A man from West Mifflin was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for federal fires and drug trafficking charges.

Giante Hilliard, 32, was sentenced to 200 months in prison on Jan. 27.

The Department of Justice said Hilliard was involved in a shooting in McKees Rocks on March 28, 2023. Video of the incident shows that, moments after Hilliard and another person left a bar and started to drive off, a third person shot at the car they were in. Hilliard returned fire from the vehicle’s passenger seat.

Hilliard is a convicted felon and is prohibited from being in possession of a gun or ammunition, officials said.

In another incident on May 8, 2023, Hilliard was the passenger in a car that was stopped by police. The driver rammed three law enforcement vehicles, allowing one of the officers to observe Hilliard with a black firearm, and sped off.

Shortly after, police found the car abandoned near a convenience store.

Nearby surveillance video showed the driver and Hilliard leaving the disabled vehicle together, and then splitting up, with Hilliard holding a black bag that he attempted to conceal under a dumpster, officials said. The black bag was recovered by law enforcement and found to contain a loaded Smith & Wesson handgun, which had been reported stolen, and approximately 300 doses of what laboratory results later confirmed was a heroin and fentanyl mixture. Ballistic testing of the handgun against nearly a dozen 40 caliber casings from the March 28 shooting determined the firearm to be a match with the one used by Hilliard in that earlier incident.

Hilliard’s fingerprints were found both on the firearm’s magazine and on some of the paper in which the narcotics were wrapped.

On May 31, 2023, Hilliard posted a video of himself with another gun on social media. Information from that video led police to obtain a search warrant for the house he was hiding out in, officials said.

Police surrounded the house but Hilliard refused to come out until several hours later. A subsequent search of the house resulted in the seizure of a substantial quantity of controlled substances that laboratory testing later confirmed to be a heroin and fentanyl mixture. In the vehicle, investigators also discovered another loaded firearm—a “ghost gun” without a serial number.

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