MINNEAPOLIS — A federal jury found a Winona man guilty as a meth distributor after a-two-day trial. Damien Duwjan Shade, age 48, had been arrested in 2023 after a drug-sniffing dog found meth sewn inside stuffed toy animals at the FedEx transfer station at the Rochester airport. The animals were in three boxes being shipped from San Diego, near the Mexico border, to a Winon address, After the verdict, U.S. District Judge Michael Davis remanded Shade into custody to awaiting sentencing. U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson noted that a somewhat similar 2013 Minnesota case rested in a 23-year prison sentence. The arrest, back in 2023, was clever policing. Drug agents opened the three boxes at the Rochester airport and replaced the meth — six ponds total — with an equivalent weight of rock salt. The agents also hid tracking devices in two of the boxes. The boxes then were loaded on the usual FedEx truck to Winona for delivery to the address on the original Shipping label and someone named Trayvon Strange, who nobody ever had ever heard of. Bingo: When Shade showed up at the Winona address, he was arrested. This was after a stealth perimeter had been established by Homeland Security agents, Winona County deputies, Winona police, and a regional sharp-shooter team. In the house, agents found the stuffed animals torn open and ghe rock salt strewn everywhere. A subsequent search of Shade’s own address yielded a loaded .357 Magnum revolver in a dresser drawer. Shade had been convicted in 2013 a a felon in possession of a firearm in San Diego. How did Shade explain all this? He had purchased the drugs in California and shipped them to the Winona address of the mother of their children.
Shade. Outwitted in what he envisioned as a fool-proof meth delivery scheme.
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Thompson, acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota: “Stuffed animals are symbols of childhood, not vessels for poison. Turning a child’s toy into a cover for lethal drugs shows the lengths drug traffickers will go to peddle their poison.”