Investigators say they shut down what was essentially a supermarket for illegal drugs in a quiet Cobb County neighborhood.
A two-year operation led to more than two dozen arrests.
Neighbor Ashlee Garrett vividly remembers the day weeks ago when the SWAT team sealed off her street and raided the house only feet away.
"I peeped out the door and they hollered close the door,” she said. “(There were a) whole lot of police with guns pointed at cars coming up telling them to turn around and go back."
Arrest records show she lived across the street from a man considered the head of a large and wide-ranging drug operation in Cobb County with tentacles to Mexican cartels.
David Maldonado Baza was known on the streets as Chucky. He was target No. 1 of more than two dozen suspects swept up in the raids.
Baza was among eight suspects who appeared in court, where an undercover agent testified Chucky was a one-stop supermarket for the most popular illegal drugs.
"Each time I would call Chucky or text Chucky and request a certain amount of narcotics, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, Chucky would direct me to an individual who would then give me the narcotics in exchange for currency,” the agent said.
The operation started in 2013 and involved phone taps, undercover buys, and finally a series of raids.
Many of the others arrested were runners or buyers. Investigators believe when they took Chucky off the streets, they cut off the flow of meth, heroin and cocaine into the county.
“It was crazy because I never thought that would be going on right in front of my house,” Garrett said.
The judge gave some of those suspects bond, but Chucky's hearing was postponed. He remains in the Cobb County Jail.
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