NYSP: Explosive material, guns, meth removed from Erin home, man charged with felonies
Robert R. Budnick, 42, of Erin, was arrested following a three-month-long investigation. According to the New York State Police, members of numerous law enforcement agencies searched a home on Staples Road in the Town of Erin on Feb. 4.
Police say the officers who searched the home found and removed the following weapons, ammo, and explosive materials:
1 AK-47 assault rifle
1 AR-10 assault rifle (ghost gun)
1 SKS assault rifle
2 sawed-off shotguns
8 bolt-action rifles
1 lever-action rifle
11 high-capacity ammunition magazines
About 10,000 rounds of assorted ammunition
About 20 pounds of binary explosive material
Several of the guns reportedly had defaced serial numbers. In addition to the items listed above, police say they also found about four ounces of methamphetamine oil, about one ounce of crystal meth, chemicals and equipment used to make meth, scales and packaging materials for drugs, and $4,700 in cash.
Budnick was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance (a class A-II felony) and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon (a class C felony). His charges were read in the Town of Horseheads Court, and he was taken to the Chemung County Jail. Budnick is currently being held on $250,000 bail or $1,000,000 bond.
A second man was arrested on a misdemeanor charge as a result of the search. Buck L. Bates, 40, of Elmira, was charged with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance (a class A misdemeanor). He was released on an appearance ticket and is scheduled to appear in the Town of Erin Court on Feb. 25.
The following departments and units were involved with the search, which was led by the New York State Police Troop E Violent Gang and Narcotics Enforcement Team (VGNET): the New York State Police Special Operations Response Team (SORT), the Contaminated Crime Scene Emergency Response Team (CCSERT), the Bomb Disposal Unit (BDU), Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), the State Police Horseheads Uniform Force (UF) and Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), the Troop E Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU), and the Elmira Police Department Drug Enforcement Unit.
The investigation that led to the arrests is ongoing at this time.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Widow of tragic NYPD cop killed in Park Avenue mass shooting gives birth to ‘beautiful baby boy'
The widow of the NYPD cop tragically killed in the Park Avenue mass shooting has given birth to the couple's third son, Mayor Eric Adams announced Monday morning. Slain NYPD Officer Didarul Islam's wife, Jamila Akhter, went into labor Sunday night and welcomed a 'beautiful baby boy' at Mount Sinai Hospital, Adams said at an unrelated press conference. 'On a happier note, we learned that Officer Islam's wife gave birth to a young, beautiful baby boy,' Adams told reporters during a briefing on another mass shooting in the city, this time in Brooklyn on Sunday. Advertisement 3 Tragic slain NYPD cop Didarul Islam poses with sons Azhaan, 5 and Ahyan, 7. Obtained by the New York Post 'I stopped by the hospital in the lobby yesterday to talk with family members, mother was in labor, and we're really excited that she gave birth to a beautiful, young child.' The couple already shared two young boys — Ahyan, 7, and Azhaan, 5 — who idolized their dad. Advertisement 'We want to continue to let them know God works in mysterious ways,' Adams said of Islam's family. 'And as mayor, I want to assure the detective and his family that we're doing to continue to be there for them. 'They are our family and the family of this great city, New York,' said Adams, a former NYPD captain. Islam, 36, was working an approved off-duty security job the evening of July 28 when gunman Shane Tamura walked into the lobby of the skyscraper that houses the NFL headquarters at East 51 Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan and opened fire with an AR-15. Tamura rattled off 47 rounds, killing Islam and three other people – building security guard Aland Etienne, Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner and Rudin Management worker Julia Hyman — and injuring one more before he fatally turned the gun on himself on the 33rd floor. Advertisement 3 The wife and other family members of Officer Islam mourn at his funeral. REUTERS Tamura, 27, who worked at the Horseshoe hotel and casino in Las Vegas, had no affiliation with the NFL but played football in high school and blamed the league for covering up chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE, a brain disease caused by repetitive head trauma that he believed he suffered from. It's not yet clear if Tamura had the disease. Islam's sons beamed with pride over their father's NYPD employment, with little Ahyan donning the Police Department's blues while at his preschool in Bronxdale, said a teacher who taught both boys in The Bronx. Advertisement 3 Islam was remembered as a hero and dedicated father. NYPD 'He said, 'I wear my police uniform just like my dad,'' teacher Tajwattie Singh had told The Post. Islam was posthumously promoted to detective first grade and remembered by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch for serving 'with steadiness, with heart, with conviction' during his somber funeral.
Buzz Feed
2 days ago
- Buzz Feed
How I Track Down Society's Most Elusive Criminals
I still remember the blood. The vultures. Most of all, I remember the stench. We had been riding on a bumpy dirt road for hours, my stomach in knots before the Jeep even left Nairobi, twisting more and more as we twisted deeper into the bush. We were looking for elephants. Kills, to be more precise. As we drove past wildebeest and impala, I thought I knew how I would react — how it would feel — but how can anyone know what will happen when they come face-to-face with death? We came upon a dry patch of savannah — dry except for the red pooling and painted across the tall grass, everywhere. And everywhere, spent shell casings fired from AK-47s. Standing over a family of elephants, or what was once a family, I felt helpless, angry, powerless. It was 2010, the height of the ivory war, when poachers would open fire on anything with tusks. I had seen reports on CNN, read about it in The New York Times, and I knew the global market for ivory carvings and statues was causing destruction here. But knowing that intellectually, and seeing a baby elephant hacked to pieces in real life is something else. At the time, there were rumors that poached ivory was being sold to al Shabaab, the Somali extremists who pledged allegiance to al Qaeda. Word was that Shabaab smuggled and sold this ' white gold ' to overseas buyers, using the profits to fund attacks like the Westgate shopping mall assault that killed 71 in downtown Nairobi in 2013. And here we were, in Tsavo National Park, deep in Shabaab's territory at a crime scene. The killers were so sure they wouldn't be caught, they left their evidence strewn across the bush. And they were right — no one would hunt them. That's because most people, including most authorities, don't see environmental crime — which includes illegal logging, illegal fishing, gold and mining and many other linked crimes in addition to this kind of illegal wildlife trade — as real crime. What's worse, they don't realize organized criminal groups often fund a laundry list of other crimes, from narcotics to human trafficking, through their environmental crimes. At nearly $300 billion, environmental crime is the fourth-largest criminal enterprise on earth. The same groups that traffic people and drugs also deal in natural resources, and they do it because it's big business, while also being lower risk than many other crimes. That's why 'large and powerful organized crime groups' are 'operating in some of the most fragile and diverse ecosystems from the Amazon to the Golden Triangle' of Southeast Asia, according to the United Nation's 2024 World Wildlife Crime Report. I didn't know all that on that hot Tsavo day, but it was obvious even then that this was bigger than poaching. The men with me were rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service, trained and tough, but without the resources to investigate transnational crime and terror, we were losing a war that couldn't be fought by scientists or rangers alone. When I realized this, I told myself I would no longer be a bystander. I would hunt the hunters. The question was, where to begin? Without knowing where that commitment would take me, I started doing just that. After that dark day, I used my background as a security consultant to help uncover the financial link between al Shabaab's involvement in the ivory trade and terrorism (a link many refused to believe until officials admitted it was real). No one — no law enforcement group or conservation group — was hunting the individuals at the top of these networks. When I realized that, I founded my nonprofit, with the goal of using surveillance and undercover monitoring to investigate and dismantle environmental crime networks. We operate like an intelligence agency for the planet, using informants, assets and surveillance to build cases and share evidence with authorities who then take it the last mile and make arrests. In this way, we have investigated crimes around the world, from rhino trafficking to illegal gold mining, leading to dozens of arrests. In 2023, evidence gathered by my team helped the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Homeland Security arrest key players in an international trafficking network. Fifteen years later, we still follow the same model. Posing as buyers, we take our time to collect inside information — evidence of sales and syndicates — collaborating with federal agencies to tie environmental crimes to transnational crime groups. It takes a unique set of skills to track multiple criminal enterprises and earn the trust of people most wouldn't dare speak to, let alone meet. Some of our targets are connected to the embassies and consulates of unfriendly nations, some are militants, some are gangsters. The constant is our undercover work to see and study the threat. Spying is like building a giant puzzle without knowing what the puzzle looks like. It takes years to build — which means resisting the temptation to make an easy early arrest. You must wait and weave a web to take out whole networks. You don't close the net until you know everything about the supply chain. Patience means cutting off 20 heads, not just front-line soldiers. That's the difference between long-term intelligence and short-term investigation. 'The same people illegally trafficking gold in Latin America or diamond mining in West Africa [are] financing fentanyl sales with wildlife parts in Mexico,' explains David Luna, who spent 20 years at the State Department fighting what's called environmental crime convergence. 'Environmental crime still isn't taken seriously enough,' warns Charles Barber, the natural resources governance director at the World Resource Institute, which in April published a report on the convergence of environmental crime with corruption, money laundering and human rights abuse. Lionel Hachemin, the director of wildlife crime at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says communicating this threat means re-education. It starts with the donors who are largely funding this fight, and who want to see results for their money. That often means arresting poachers, who are the most visible target for law enforcement. Like in all other crime organizations, those at the top are harder to see — they exist in shadow, hiding behind legitimate businesses, financial institutions and officials. But poachers are often simply trying to feed their families; they can't afford to say no to the meager earnings the work provides, and arresting them does little to impact the overall network or create lasting change. What I've learned fighting deforestation in the Amazon, wildlife traffickers in China and illegal fishing in Mexico is that we must target the heads of these networks. My team learned this lesson fighting drug traffickers. Every time you seize a ton of cocaine, for instance, traffickers will send another ton. It's just the cost of business. Resource crime is different because resources are finite and the species often endangered. If you make an arrest too quickly and don't destroy the networks, the impact on nature is huge. A bust looks good on TV, but it means that criminals will have to kill even more animals to fill their quotas. A few years ago, we were undercover in Vietnam posing as buyers, and a major trafficker showed us dozens of rhino horns. 'What happens if we pay and customs seizes the horns?' we asked. I'll never forget how he smiled. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'We'll just send it again, free of charge.' The public needs to know that fentanyl was traded by Chinese gangs for environmental resources supplied by Mexican cartels, Luna tells me. Maybe they soon will. With eight cartels now designated as terror groups, that could bring attention and funding, says Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior Brookings Institute fellow studying crime and terror. This is the shadow side of conservation that scientists aren't trained for — and most nongovernmental organizations prefer to ignore. But until authorities see that eco-crimes are part of a network of crimes that are perpetrated by sophisticated organized crime groups, the exploitation and violence will continue. Andrea Crosta is the founder of
CBS News
2 days ago
- CBS News
2 dead in separate drownings in Orange County, New York
Two people died Saturday in separate drowning incidents in Orange County, New York. The first incident happened around 11:45 a.m. at Turkey Hill Pond in the Town of Highlands area of Harriman State Park. According to New York State Park Police, first responders were sent to the pond for a reported drowning. A man was pulled from the water and pronounced dead. His identity has not yet been released. New York State Park Police say swimming is not allowed in Turkey Hill Pond. The investigation is ongoing. The second drowning happened just before 4 p.m. at Walton Lake in the Town of Monroe. New York State Police said Mohammadsadegh Kiani, a 36-year-old from Plainview, was sitting alone on an inflatable paddle board about 40 feet from shore when he lost his balance and fell into water that was about 6-7 feet deep. According to police, Kiani began to struggle and did not resurface. Patrons of a nearby American Legion post pulled Kiani out of the water and began performing life-saving measures until emergency responders arrived, police said. Kiani was taken to a local hospital, where he later died. Police said the drowning has been ruled accidental.
