Clover shooting leads York cops to drug dealer selling on video. He admits it.
A York County man who was caught in what police and prosecutors say was a drug sting that started after a shooting near a Clover park where children were playing has been sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Aaron Jerome Floyd, 34, pleaded guilty to trafficking methamphetamine and cocaine along with a gun and marijuana charge Thursday in York County criminal court. Visiting Judge Eugene Griffith accepted a plea deal between prosecutors and Floyd for a negotiated 17 years. Some charges were reduced and others dropped as part of the negotiation that Griffith called “a package deal.”
In September 2025, police and prosecutors held a news conference with live Facebook video after a roundup where Floyd and nine others were charged with drug crimes after the monthslong investigation into drug dealing near Clover in western York County. Authorities called it a push by the county’s drug unit, made up of officers from several police departments, to fight drug dealing in an area close to Charlotte and the North Carolina border.
Floyd had been jailed without bail since.
Thursday in court, prosecutor Marina Hamilton said people fled the March 2025 shooting scene at Roosevelt Park and went to a store/barber shop on Kings Mountain Street in Clover.
Hamilton told Griffith: “Through this investigation officers began to understand that this was a hub of Blood gang, and there were numerous complaints, and some confidential informants giving information that Aaron Floyd, in addition to some others, was selling narcotics out of that location.”
The probe afterward showed police had video of Floyd selling a pound of meth and then cocaine to informants working with police on two different occasions, Hamilton said. Agents found more drugs and weapons during a search of his vehicle and where he lived, Hamilton said.
The judge explained to Floyd he could have faced as many as three trials because the crimes happened on different dates, and any convictions from them could have added up to mandatory sentences far more than 17 years.
“She’s got three shots at you,” Griffith told Floyd about Hamilton, the prosecutor, “She could lose two and you still get 25 years.”
Yet Griffith told Floyd that he could still have a productive life after prison. Because drug trafficking is non-parolable, Floyd must serve at least 85 percent of the 17-year sentence.
“It could be longer, but long enough,” Griffith said of the sentence.
“Yes, sir,” Floyd told Griffith.
But Griffith then added: “You can’t be doing this anymore when you get out.”
Floyd’s lawyer, Michael Coleman, told the judge Floyd was a “stand-up guy” who had been truthful with him since being arrested.
“We find good people who do bad things sometimes,” Coleman said.
Coleman said he had reviewed the drug deal videos and drug seizure evidence against Floyd many times and agreed with the decision to plead guilty.
After court ended, Coleman told The Herald he disputed prosecutors’ allegations of Floyd’s gang ties.
