by Mike Donoghue, Vermont News First
A Burlington School Board member has resigned from his newly elected office after he was charged in Massachusetts in a felony drug trafficking case, officials said.
Massachusetts State Police said they arrested Rida M. Kori, 24, of Riverside Avenue on a heroin/fentanyl trafficking charge after he was stopped on Interstate 91 in Holyoke, Mass. on Sept. 16.
The vehicle contained 4,300 individual glassine envelopes believed to contain heroin/fentanyl and an unspecified amount of cash, state police said.
About 1,300 doses were found in the glove compartment of the Vermont registered Chrysler, police said. It was found by U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Special Agent Timothy Hoffman, who was formerly assigned to Vermont.
Another 3,000 doses were located in a portable safe located in the trunk of the car, but Kori denied the safe belonged to him, State Trooper Michael DeCaro reported.
Kori appeared in Holyoke (Mass.) District Court on Sept. 17 and was released on $10,000 cash bail by Judge William Hadley, a court spokeswoman said Monday.
Kori is due back in court on Thursday, she said.
News about the out-of-state drug arrest eventually began to circulate to police in Vermont, a spokesman said.
The Vermont-registered white 2015 Chrysler 200 with dark tint became known to the DEA in Springfield, Mass. on July 23, DeCaro said. The regional drug task force was working on an unrelated case at the Red Roof Inn in Enfield, Conn. — a known high level drug trafficking area — about 10 miles south of Springfield, officials said.
Kori, who was born in Sudan, has overcome adversity in his young life and is a product of the city school system.
Kori did not respond to a phone message from Vermont News First seeking comment.
Burlington School Board Chair Clare Wool said she was disappointed.
“On behalf of the Burlington School Board I want to thank Commissioner Kori for his volunteer service and I have accepted his verbal resignation due to personal circumstances,” Wool said.
“At this time it would be inappropriate for me to discuss anything further,” she said in an email to Vermont News First.
The Burlington School Board is scheduled to meet tonight (Tuesday), but the resignation apparently came too late for the printed agenda.
Kori, who was unopposed for a two-year term in March to represent Ward 1, also was an assistant soccer coach at Burlington High in 2023, but not this year, according to the school district website.
Kori is a graduate of Burlington High School where he was part of a state championship soccer team in 2016. The midfielder later attended Castleton University and eventually transferred to Central Connecticut State University to play Division I soccer for his final two years.
While at Burlington High, Kori was involved in mentoring at-risk youth, according to his LinkedIn page.
His twin brother, Ramzi Kori, 24, who also played soccer at BHS, faced his own felony drug and gun charges earlier in both New York and Vermont, records show.
It was during the July 23 surveillance in the unrelated case that the DEA in Springfield, Mass. spotted the Vermont license plate on the Chrysler, which was registered to Rida Kori, police said. They linked him to his brother, Ramzi Kori, who was busted by the DEA in Vermont in 2021.
The latest drug investigation in Massachusetts showed Rida Kori’s car had made several quick trips to neighborhoods in Springfield, Mass. and Enfield, Conn. known for drug trafficking before heading back north toward Vermont, state police said.
The experience of trained investigators shows those short duration traffic patterns have been observed with other narcotics traffickers, DeCaro said in court papers.
Part of the recent trip on Sept. 16 was monitored by the Massachusetts State Police, the DEA and other task force members, records show. A decision was made by investigators to pull over Kori following some stops he had made, including for about 10 minutes at a hotel room at the Red Roof Inn in Enfield, officials said.
It was shortly after investigators began chatting with him on the roadside in Holyoke, Mass. that Kori said he wanted a lawyer, police said. Police had become suspicious because his statements on his travels did not match where they had seen him stop, DeCaro said.
Kori’s car was impounded and he was taken to the state police barracks in Northampton where he again asked for a lawyer, police said. The interviewing ended and eventually was charged, police said.
After graduating from Central Connecticut in New Britain, Conn. with a degree in finance, Kori returned to Burlington and decided to go into coaching, according to the Burlington School District website. It noted Kori was an assistant soccer coach at BHS and also was a coach for Peak Football Academy — previously known as Synergy Football Club, where he had played.
“Giving back to the community is important to him because of all the support he has received growing up and believes now it’s his turn to give a lending hand,” the Burlington School District website said.
His brother, Ramzi Kori, had separate drug arrests by New York State Police in Saratoga County in August 2020 and by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Vermont in July 2021. In each case Ramzi Kori was carrying a loaded gun, police said.
Ramzi Kori was given several breaks by the courts during his drug cases. In the New York case he avoided prison time in early 2021 when a state judge opted to only place him on probation until March 2026 based on his young age, 21, at the time of the offense.
Four months later he was arrested in Vermont after he was pulled over in a Land Rover in Richmond with about 6,850 bags of fentanyl-laced heroin, a loaded 9-mm Sig Sauer handgun, $2,500 in cash and three cell phones in Richmond, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said.
The DEA said it was looking for the owner of the Land Rover for a federal arrest warrant in another drug case, but instead found Kori at the wheel.
Investigation showed Ramzi Kori had about $58,000 in various financial accounts and had been dealing drugs since 2020, officials said.
Ramzi Kori, who was on his way back from Massachusetts, eventually received a 3-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to possession with intent to distribute heroin and possession of a firearm by a felon, records show.
The federal sentencing guidelines had suggested a minimum of 51 months and a maximum of 63 months, but Judge Christina Reiss cut the penalty to 36 months.
Ramzi Kori was supposed to be on supervised release for three years after he got out of prison, but defense lawyer Brooks G. McArthur last month petitioned the court to let him off just after one year. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan A. Ophardt had objected.
Judge Reiss agreed to remove Ramzi Kori from supervised conditions on Sept. 18, one day after McArthur’s motion, court records now show.
A feature sports story in the Register, the award-winning BHS student newspaper, reported in November 2022 about Rida Kori and another former teammate both returning to help coach as assistants in the Burlington school soccer program.
Register Staff Writer Georgia Wool quoted Kori and his sidekick as wanting to serve as role models for the young players.
“I want to help them improve their style of play,” Kori said. “But also get schoolwork done and go to classes because they are student athletes” the newspaper quoted Kori as saying.
That career goal now appears to be extinguished.