Sarnia man already facing trafficking charges picks up another one while in custody

A Sarnia man charged earlier this year with four counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking following year $6,500 drug bust is now facing a fifth charge after he was arrested again last week, his third arrest this year following a summertime standoff.

Joshua Erdodi, 36, was arrested around 5 am on May 3, more than five weeks after a Sarnia police officer first attempted to pull over a vehicle with unauthorized plates on Margret Street, but called off the chase for safety concerns. At headquarters that Wednesday morning, police displayed confiscated drugs and weapons including more than 20 grams of fentanyl, 17-plus grams of methamphetamine, more than 12 grams of heroin, eight hydromorphone pills, and a collapsible baton, police said.

Erdodi was hit with four counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking linked to those four drugs along with single counts of unauthorized possession of a weapon and flight from police. He was granted bail, but by July he was wanted back in custody after his surety applied to be released from the role.

Erdodi eventually was arrested following a 75-minute standoff with police on July 16 in the area of ​​Campbell Street and Whitmore Avenue. Despite a suspect allegedly telling police they had firearms and other weapons, no additional charges were laid and Erdodi was only arrested on the safety warrant, police said.

However, a new charge has been laid after Erdodi was arrested again last Wednesday while still in custody. The charge is an additional count of possession of fentanyl for the purpose of trafficking tied to an alleged incident on July 26, court records show.

A Sarnia courtroom heard – there was no publication ban in place at the time – the charge involves an alleged drug seizure at the Sarnia Jail. The court also heard, although a warrant was issued two days later, Erdodi was transferred to the Elgin-Middlesex Detention Center in London and he couldn’t be arrested on it until he was brought back to Sarnia, which explains the five-week gap between the alleged incident and the arrest.

Erdodi, who recently switched lawyers, will be back in court later this week. None of the charges laid this year in Sarnia have been tested in court.

According to Postmedia’s files, Erdodi, who also has ties to the Windsor area, has been in and out of the court system regularly for more than a decade. He nearly died in April 2011 after being attacked by a mob in a Kingston prison while serving a two-year sentence out of Sarnia for robbery and possession of stolen trucks.

Erdodi was convicted again in late 2014 of theft, driving while disqualified and threatening to kill a man trying to help him after crashing a stolen truck into a tree in August 2013. He received one year of house arrest.

But he spent four months of that one year in jail after being caught with methamphetamine.

In October 2019, Erdodi was handed a two and a half year sentence for having been found with a sawed-off shotgun in his vehicle two years earlier. Two months later he was acquitted of all charges relating to an unrelated masked armed robbery.

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@ObserverTerry