By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

COLUMBIANA – A 52-year-old Alabaster man will spend the next decade in prison after pleading guilty recently to distributing crack cocaine in the city.

Terence Fitzgerald Hale, who lists an address on Seventh Avenue Southeast in Alabaster, pleaded guilty in late February to one felony count of distribution of a controlled substance. Because Hale had three previous felony drug convictions on his record, Circuit Court Judge Lara Alvis sentenced him to 10 years in prison and ordered him to complete and pay for a substance abuse treatment program.

Through a plea agreement, one drug distribution charge was dropped against Hale. According to court documents, Hale could have faced up to 130 months in prison for the crime.

Hale was one of several suspects arrested by the Shelby County Drug Enforcement Task Force during its “Operation Trifecta” in May 2016.

With the assistance of the Alabaster and Pelham police departments and the Shelby County Tactical Response Unit, the SCDTF initiated the operation to target key suppliers and dealers of cocaine, crack cocaine, prescription narcotics and marijuana.

Nine individuals were arrested at about 7 p.m. on May 12, 2016, in the area of 7th Avenue Southeast in Alabaster, while Hale and two other suspects were apprehended later.

At the time of the arrests, Task Force Commander Lt. Clay Hammac said those arrested during the operation were “linked to one of the major supply chains of crack cocaine in west Shelby County.”

According to his indictment, Hale distributed crack cocaine in the 200 block of Seventh Avenue Southeast in Alabaster on Dec. 9, 2015, and again on Jan. 4, 2016.