Breaking Bad may be fiction, but a Boston man named Reverend Shaun Harrison is about as close to a real life Gus Fring as you can get. Harrison is accused of living a “double life,” one where he was officially an upstanding member of society in addition to being a marijuana drug lord charged with shooting a teenager “execution style” in the back of the head.
In a related report by the Inquisitr , there really is a meth dealer named Walter White who was arrested by police in Montana.
In the TV show Breaking Bad , Gustavo Fring was a business owner whose fast food chain, Pollos Los Hermanos, was used as a cover for distributing meth to the southeast United States. Gus Fring even donated heavily to charities and made sure to be involved in helping the local police, especially any Drug Enforcement Agency officers.
Before being caught in the act, Reverend Shaun Harrison was an associate minister at Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Boston English High School dean even ran for a Boston City Council seat in 2009 and was the former head of Operation: Project GO, a youth outreach program intended at keeping local kids out of gangs.
Harrison also ran substance abuse and anger management programs at the Jamaica Plain high school. Harrison established Clergy Home Visits Inc., which was supposedly intended to help school students. As a member of the Gun Owners’ Action League, Harrison supported educating children about firearms.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh says there was no evidence that Shaun Harrison was a drug dealer until he attempted to murder a 17-year-old high school student who was dealing marijuana for him.
“This is a sad situation,” Walsh said, according to the Boston Globe . “We have someone who seems to be have a very good record of working with police department, of working with the community, of working with the students — and some of those kids are in tough lives — to turn their lives around. [Shaun Harrison] was living a double life here. That unfortunate. That’s very sad that that’s the case here.”
Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans was alleged to have made sexual remarks to students at the Green Academy four years ago, but otherwise the only other hint that the good reverend was breaking bad were two complaints about drug dealing related to Harrison’s home.
“Our officers sat outside that location for weeks on weeks and we saw nothing to indicate the coming and going,” Evans said, according to the Boston Herald . “There was people coming and going, but they were staying quite a long time, so those aren’t indicators of active drug dealing going on. But we vetted those out. The two complaints we did get, we acted on. But we didn’t see anything to take it to the next level… There was nothing to indicate that this fellow needed to be watched any closer.”
Police have been scrutinizing the records of the former Boston English High School dean, but so far little has come up. But when police investigated, they seized marijuana, cocaine, and guns. Multiple men were arrested because it’s believed they attempted to remove evidence from Shaun Harrison’s apartment.
Shaun Harrison is being held on a $250,000 bond and the pretrial hearing will take place on April 6, 2015.