An illegal-weapons kingpin nailed in the city’s largest gun bust used the Sandy Hook massacre as an excuse to raise his prices to an undercover cop, prosecutors said Friday.
Earl Campbell, 23, “spared no excuse with trying to raise his prices with the undercover, once citing a national tragedy with Sandy Hook Elementary School as a reason he would have to charge more for his guns,’’ said Manhattan ADA for the Special Narcotics Prosecutor Nicholas Connor.
Campbell indicated that he deserved more dough because the risk was greater for him and other gun smugglers after Sandy Hook, given the increased crackdown, authorities said.
Campbell, who lives in South Carolina, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday.
His lawyer, Ralph Cherchian, argued for bail, saying Campbell has family ties to the city and was known as a local do-gooder, helping with Hurricane Sandy cleanup and at a local summer basketball camp.
Justice Bonnie Wittner wasn’t persuaded.
“He has no ties here. He brought in hundreds of guns — 80 firearms. Absolutely not,” Wittner said sternly.
The gun bust, announced in August, netted 254 weapons and 19 suspects. In fewer than 12 months, the perps managed to funnel the weapons on cheap Chinatown buses from the South to New York, authorities said.
The haul included military-grade machine guns with silencers as large as the weapons themselves, and Soviet-era assault rifles with flash and smoke suppressors.
Campbell’s girlfriend, Kendall “Zebra Girl” Jones, 22, helped ferry the guns, authorities said.
She once smuggled an SKS rifle by bus to New York by stashing its parts in her zebra-striped suitcase, prosecutors said.
The arms were initially bought for $200 to $300 a pop through two networks — one in South Carolina and the other in North Carolina, where gun laws are notoriously weak, officials said.
They were resold for an average of $800 each on the streets of New York.
The other main suspect, Walter Walker of North Carolina, is contesting his extradition.