Man accused of running drug operation near Texas City schools

Right now to this wild story coming out of Galveston County. So when you look at the video of this home, you're gonna be like, it's like any other home, but it's anything but that police say they just took down what they're calling a convenience store for poison. And also it was all run by a convicted murderer who was out on bond like double whammy. Our McKenna Earnhardt is live for us. She's been out there in Texas City. So I guess this was a huge shrug, but the home's right behind you. I mean, it looks like a regular home, right? Yeah. No, I mean, there's Children's bikes up and down the street here. We just saw school school bus drive by. I mean, Galveston police described this home here on Appomattox Drive literally as a drive through drugstore. And I'm not talking about like a CVS or a Walgreens. And so it's literally a three minute drive. My photographer and I drove it earlier to two elementary schools, the College of the mainland and a middle school. And so, uh, task force officers, they posted up here for two months watching this home and they said they saw teenagers just going in and out of this home buying drugs rushing. So McKenna, what did they find inside? Because they're saying it's a convenience store for poison. I'm guessing it's like everything in the Yeah, I mean, you name it is kind of what it sounded like. Fit and all THC wax, alcohol. And they say that this was all packaged to appeal to young people. And they say he even had a credit card machine set up to make payments easier. So the suspect behind all of this is 50 year old Jamel McDonald. And here's why officials are so furious. McDonald is a convicted murderer who already did 25 years in prison. And when police raided this house, he was already out on bond for another drug charge from last fall. So listen to Galveston Police Chief Doug Bali described what officers walked into when they raided this place. This person was peddling poison to our kids, peddling poison in your community and giving everyone the ability to pay for it with a credit card. This offender needs the full attention of my office. This person has a criminal history, a murder conviction, drug convictions and now peddling these type of substances on the house near a college community college to elementary schools within walking distance. This is outrageous. Said it right there. It's outrageous. I mean, what are the neighbors thinking? Oh, Rashi. I mean, just standing out here. You normally my job entails me, you know, going door to door searching for people to talk to. People were coming up to me saying how thankful they were that this has been shut down here, saying that it was clearly obvious what was going on. I also made my way that short three minute drive to the middle school where parents spoke with me and said how thankful he is as well. Take a look, man. I just I'm glad that they got caught the guy. That's all that matters. They caught the guy. He's out our system and we don't have to worry about our kids getting into it with that stuff like that. And no sooner than they pull off more cars pull up and I know eventually with all of this traffic and with all of the drugs being dealt, the next thing is gonna happen is gunfire. Okay. And then you talked about this credit card machine like this was a whole operation. Have local police seen that before? Is this like a new trend? So they told me it's kind of just how things are nowadays. They actually touched on that when they were asked in the press conference and said that it does take it to a whole new level, though, being that this was a credit card machine being used to target middle school and college students and high school. So I mean, just just yeah, they told me that it's kind of just how things are now. So definitely a whole whole new deal. Rashi back to you.