New York drug dealer sentenced for overdose death of 'The Wire' actor

The man who sold a fatal fentanyl-laced bag of heroin to actor Michael K Williams, who played the shotgun-toting drug dealer Omar Little in the HBO crime drama The Wire, was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 months in prison, according to court records.

Carlos Macci, 72, was part of a four-man crew selling drugs from Brooklyn, and he sold the lethal dose to Williams, federal prosecutors said in court documents.

Prosecutors had asked for a longer sentence of 48 months. "For decades the defendant has been selling deadly narcotics: heroin and now heroin laced with fentanyl," they wrote in court papers.

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An autopsy and court records show that Williams, 54, died of a drug overdose and was found in his Brooklyn apartment on September 6, 2021. Drug paraphernalia was discovered at the scene, police said.

In a plea agreement, Macci pleaded guilty in April to narcotics conspiracy, according to court papers.

Fentanyl was associated with 70,600 of the drug overdoses in the US in 2021, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Williams was known for humanizing the characters he portrayed, bringing to the roles his own experience as a Black man growing up in New York.

Among the real-life struggles he tapped were his bouts with drug addiction, which he brought to his best known role for The Wire. The TV series, which aired from 2002 to 2008, was set in Baltimore and told the story of the narcotics trade from the perspective of criminals, police and the people caught between them.

Williams also won praise for his performance in Boardwalk Empire, an HBO series set in Atlantic City, New Jersey during the Prohibition era of the 1920s.