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Guilty plea in deadly Cheektowaga shooting

A conviction in a deadly shooting would have never happened without a federal drug arrest, according to the district attorney.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A man from Buffalo pleaded guilty Tuesday to a manslaughter charge related to a deadly shooting in Cheektowaga back in July 2016.

43-year-old Jeffrey Brown shot and killed a man at a home on Marne Road the night before Independence Day. Authorities said a love triangle prompted the shooting. Brown's estranged wife showed up at a party with a new boyfriend, and a fight escalated to the shooting, police said.

Erie County District Attorney John Flynn said the manslaughter conviction never would have happened had it not been for a federal drug arrest. The U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted Brown for a drug conspiracy charge after he was found with 700 grams of heroin.

Brown pleaded guilty to that charge earlier this month.

"We had a (shooting) crime here where we had no cooperation at all from any witnesses," Flynn explained at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. "We were never going to solve this crime. This was going to go as a cold case homicide where unless we received some intelligence from somewhere, this case was going to go unsolved. But fortunately through the work of the Buffalo Police Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office, they were able to leverage... the defendant to own up to this crime, and he subsequently pled guilty today in court."

Brown faces at least 10 years in federal prison on the drug charge. He'll be sentenced on the manslaughter charge in April. The sentences will run concurrently.

Jeffrey Brown Indictment by WGRZ-TV on Scribd

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