A recently elected Vermont school board member has resigned after pleading not guilty to heroin and fentanyl trafficking charges in Massachusetts.
Rida Kori, a 24-year-old graduate of Burlington High School, was a new member of the Burlington Board of School when police seized about 86 grams of the dangerous drugs during a September 16 traffic stop in Holyoke, VTDigger reported.
Kori then resigned from his volunteer position with the public school system after previously being elected to serve a two-year term earlier in the year, district spokesperson Russ Elek announced.
“On behalf of the Burlington School Board, I want to thank commissioner Kori for his volunteer service and I have accepted his formal resignation due to his personal circumstances,” Burlington School Board of Commissioners Chair Clare Wool said.
An affidavit obtained by the outlet revealed that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was conducting a separate narcotics investigation in Enfield, Connecticut in July when they spotted Kori’s vehicle.
After tracking him with electronic surveillance, investigators learned that he went on “several trips into Massachusetts and Connecticut,” the publication states.
On one of his trips, law enforcement officers stopped Kori on Interstate 91 to allegedly find 1,300 glassine envelopes with the suspected drugs.
The suspected trafficker was released on a $10,000 cash bail and is scheduled to return to court on Thursday.
Kori appeared in Holyoke District Court on Sept. 17 and was released on a $10,000 cash bail.
His twin brother, Ramzi Kori, was convicted of similar charges in 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Vermont.
Ramzi was sentenced to serve three years in prison after a Burlington Police traffic stop revealed 6,850 bags of fentanyl-laced heroin and a loaded 9 mm Sig Sauer handgun in his possession.
“Government witnesses reported that Kori had been dealing heroin in the Burlington area since 2020,” prosecutors added.
Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that approximately 107,543 people fatally overdosed on drugs in the U.S. in 2023. While the CDC does not track the exact number of fentanyl deaths, the most recent data from 2022 shows that 74,000 drug overdose deaths involved synthetic opioids other than methadone — of which the most popular is fentanyl.
Another recent traffic stop that took place in Roswell, Georgia, led to police seizing enough fentanyl to kill 60,000 people.
