BRATTLEBORO — Authorities seized multiple suspects, narcotics and weaponry Thursday during a dawn raid of a headline-grabbing drug house between a special needs school and residence for single mothers and children.
Neighbors woke at 6 a.m. to find Brattleboro police cruisers and undercover Vermont State Police Drug Task Force cars surrounding 33 Oak St., a property in the news so much a recent law enforcement press release identified it simply as “a well known residence due to drug activity stemming from it.”
Authorities armed with a search warrant arrested four people — tenant Francis Macie and fellow apartment dwellers Juan A. Sanchez Jr., Linda Wainright and Desiree Wells-Cooper — in one of the house’s eight units, which contained suspected narcotics and cocaine base, two digital scales, intravenous drug needles and a pistol with a full magazine of bullets.
The raid is the second at the property this winter. Brattleboro police stormed the same apartment Dec. 28 and seized a safe full of cocaine, opioids and amphetamines, as well as a loaded .38 caliber revolver with an obliterated serial number, a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun and several boxes of ammunition. That time, however, no one was taken into custody.
The latest action came two days after a former occupant, Chyquan Cupe, was detained in U.S. District Court in Burlington on federal charges of distributing cocaine and fentanyl.
“This is a man who is clearly out of control,” U.S. Magistrate Judge John Conroy said of Cupe, who faces eight felony and 17 misdemeanor charges in state court. They include allegations of holding two women at gunpoint Christmas Day and forcing them to brawl over a $200 drug debt, only to reportedly pull one by the hair two days later and announce “I’m going to beat and kill you right here.”
In a U.S. District Court affidavit filed Thursday involving Macie, Sanchez, Wainright and Wells-Cooper, a member of the State Police Drug Task Force said he and his peers investigated 33 Oak St. with the help of confidential informants who purchased heroin and fentanyl from occupants four times in the past two weeks.
The four were transported from Brattleboro to an initial appearance Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Burlington, where all their cases will be heard.
The raid also follows a Feb. 17 VTDigger report that described how police have fielded more than 70 calls involving 33 Oak St. this past year, with reports ranging from loitering, noise and disorderly conduct to overdoses, assaults and stolen vehicles.
Neighbors woke over Presidents Day weekend to find the words “we sell drugs” spray-painted on the house and retired the night of Feb. 19 to hear what sounded like gunfire, spurring the arrival of seven police cruisers that temporarily closed the street while authorities searched with rifles and a trained dog.
Oak Street not only hosts a school and home for single mothers but also two apartment buildings owned by former Gov. Peter Shumlin, who made national news five years ago by devoting his State of the State address to rising local reports of opioid abuse.
Hours after Thursday’s raid, neighbors watched a steady stream of drug house patrons knock in vain on the door of the empty apartment 4, spurring a resident to pin up a sign that read, “They all got arrested — your drugs are at the police station.”
Local leaders say 33 Oak St. had exploded into such a “hot spot” over the past year it was topped only by two other longtime drug houses in less affluent neighborhoods. Neighbors acknowledged that as they said stopping drug dealing on their street would only send buyers somewhere else.
“The unfortunate thing,” one said, “is where do they go from here?”
