A Conover man will spend seven to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to trafficking opioids by possession and possession of a firearm by felon during Catawba County Superior Court on August 24, 2026.
The sentence was imposed by Superior Court Judge Karen Eady Williams of Mecklenburg County after 33-year-old Allan Anthony Little entered a guilty plea to those charges.
He also will be required to pay a mandatory fine of $750,000.
Little will serve his period of incarceration in custody of the North Carolina Division of Adult Corrections.
A traffic stop for blacked out windows on a vehicle driven by the defendant was conducted on June 2, 2025, just before midnight by a Catawba County deputy. A K9 unit alerted to the presence of drugs in the vehicle, and a probable cause search led to the recovery of numerous packets of various kinds of narcotics.
Little was arrested on June 3, 2025, and a jail call between him and the female passenger of the vehicle indicated they knew of the drugs in the car.
Testing by the State Crime Lab confirmed that the drugs seized were a trafficking amount of opiates.
On May 9, 2025, officers from Newton Police Department responded to a call regarding a suspect asleep in his car at the gas pumps of a convenience store. He had been there about an hour.
When officers were able to rouse the defendant from his slumber, they noticed tin foil and two torch lighters on his lap and a box of ammunition on the passenger seat. Little denied there was a firearm in the vehicle.
When he was asked to step out of the vehicle, a magazine for a handgun was seen on his hip. A subsequent search of the vehicle resulted in the location of a 9-millimeter firearm with loaded magazine.
Little previously had been convicted of felony possession of methamphetamine in August 2018.
Investigation of the cases was conducted by Joshua Talbert and Grayson Cameron of the Catawba County Sheriff’s Office, and Noah Buff of Newton Police Department. Assistant District Attorney Melanie Earles prosecuted the case for the State with assistance from Legal Assistant Jordan Arney.