While a Garfield man faces a federal detention hearing Friday on machine gun possession charges related to illegal Glock switches, a second man has been charged in a similar but unrelated case.
A federal grand jury handed up an indictment March 21 against Donald Tyree Smith, 35, of Dormont, on counts of illegal possession of a machine gun and possession of a gun by a felon.
The case was unsealed Wednesday after his arrest, and he faces a detention hearing next week.
The grand jury said that on March 5, Smith possessed a Glock semi-automatic pistol equipped with a switch to convert it to an automatic. Under federal law, the switch and the gun equipped with it are both considered machine guns and are illegal.
Law officers across the country are seeing a spike in illegal Glock switches, according to the ATF.
On Wednesday, the FBI arrested Jared James Williams in another case involving the the switches. Agents executed a federal search warrant and raided his apartment on Penn Avenue and said they found a bag of switches in his bedroom along with multiple extended pistol magazines.
Agents also found two guns covered with white powder and other evidence of drug dealing. In addition to the machine gun switches, agents said they recovered methamphetamine, fentanyl and $21,000 in cash.
Williams told the agents that he was flushing cocaine down the toilet when they arrived and admitted that he planned to sell guns equipped with Glock switches, according to court papers.
He is set for a detention hearing Friday afternoon.
Smith remains in custody pending a hearing Monday.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
