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Local Drug Trafficker Charged In Federal Court

Old habits are hard to break.

As recently as September, Jamestown resident Odessin M. McBride seemed poised for success, posing with local officials at a ribbon cutting ceremony for his new cellphone shop, Ring It Wireless, located at 406 W. Third St.

The scene was a far cry from McBride’s former life, one sullied by criminal activity and the violent streets of Brooklyn and Buffalo, where he was raised.

But on Friday, less than a year after his grand opening, McBride, 38, found himself being charged in federal court for reportedly distributing and dispensing controlled substances.

The charge stems from a May 19 raid, in which police executed a search warrant at his 10 Sampson St. home and seized nearly 160 grams of cocaine and crack cocaine, along with cash, drug paraphernalia and a set of brass knuckles.

On Friday morning, McBride’s initial charges of second- and third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminal use of drug paraphernalia were dismissed in Jamestown City Court due to his case moving to the federal level.

He appeared in the U.S. District Court in Buffalo on Friday afternoon.

According to Captain Robert F. Samuelson, division commander of the Jamestown Police Department, the federal charge is due to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s involvement in the Sampson Street raid.

“The Jamestown Police Department has a liaison officer assigned to the DEA … and they assist the Jamestown Metro Drug Task Force with certain cases,” Samuelson said. “Federal prosecutors can choose which cases to prosecute federally.”

Samuelson declined to offer specifics on why the DEA was involved in this particular case.

McBride is scheduled for a detention hearing Tuesday at 11:15 a.m. before the Hon. H. Kenneth Schroeder Jr. in Buffalo.

His wife, 33-year-old Ashley R. McBride, who was also charged in the Sampson Street raid, was released under supervision of probation Friday in Jamestown City Court.

Odessin McBride, who moved to Jamestown at the age of 16, started having run-ins with the law in due time, charged with burglary just four years later. He served three and a half years in maximum security prisons like Green Haven in Duchess County and Great Meadows outside Glen Falls.

On Dec. 22, 2006, McBride was arrested after members of the Jamestown Police Department’s SWAT team raided two homes on Newland Avenue and Sampson Street. He was charged with selling drugs to an undercover agent, which police said was the culmination of a six-month investigation into the McBride family. Both his father and cousin were arrested as well.

McBride pleaded guilty to his crime and was sentenced to a maximum of six years behind bars. He was conditionally released on parole in 2012.

According to a 2007 article in The Post-Journal, McBride was reportedly the center of a flurry of rumors in November 2006 that violent street gangs like “the Bloods” were establishing themselves in Jamestown, rumors he later told The Post-Journal were “out of proportion.” Police blamed him for a string of shooting incidents in the city around the same time, many of which contributed to the gang concerns.

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