PORTLAND – A Lewiston man was convicted on federal drug charges Wednesday in connection with a home invasion in Sabattus late last year.

Mitchell McGuire faces up to 30 years in prison after a U.S. District Court jury found him guilty of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and other charges.

The charges stem from an incident in December during which McGuire, armed with a handgun, stormed into a Spruce Street home in Sabattus.

Investigators say McGuire taped up the parents of a man who owed him money while the couple’s young daughter lay in bed nearby.

The 27-year-old Oxford Street man was initially charged with burglary and criminal threatening as a result of the early morning home invasion. He was later charged with aggravated trafficking in crack after police searched his Lewiston home.

Police said McGuire went to the Spruce Street home just after dawn Dec. 30 looking for a 20-year-old man who he said owed him $2,000.

The man he was looking for was not home, police said. So McGuire, ordered the man’s parents to show him around the house. He also bound them with duct tape while telling the parents that their son owed him money, police said.

Nobody was hurt during the invasion, and no shots were fired, police said.

“During this entire incident, the homeowner’s 10-year-old daughter was lying in her bed fearful to leave her room while listening to her parents’ ordeal,” Sabattus police Sgt. Rick Bates wrote in an affidavit.

After McGuire left the home and the break-in was reported to police, several local and federal agencies became involved in the investigation.

The man McGuire had gone to the Spruce Street home to collect money from later learned that his parents had been bound with tape, police said. That man called McGuire and demanded an explanation.

“Mitchell stated… that he was not going to be stiffed again and that he had better return his money or (McGuire) would go back to his parents’ house and take care of this himself,” Bates wrote in the court document.

The son of the victims told police that McGuire was the man they were looking for in the home invasion.

Police went to McGuire’s Oxford Street apartment shortly after and searched the residence with a warrant. Investigators said they found two ski masks, two rolls of duct tape and rubber gloves at the apartment. They also found more than a dozen crack rocks inside a condom, police said.

McGuire was charged additionally with violating bail conditions stemming from a November arrest on drug trafficking charges.

The case against McGuire was turned over to officials in U.S. District Court who decided to pursue federal charges against him. He was convicted after a three-day trial, which wrapped up Wednesday at the Portland courthouse.

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