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The owner of a North Portland corner store that became a supply room for open-air drug dealing was sentenced to 13 months in prison after pleading guilty Wednesday to delivering heroin. Donald Sharma will begin his sentence on Oct. 2, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office announced.
Sharma, who owns the Stop N Go Mini Mart at 2858 N Williams Ave. kitty-corner from Dawson Park, was arrested on a bundle of drug-related charges on March 4, including manufacturing, possessing and delivering cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and methamphetamine.
“Today shows the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office commitment to protecting families where they gather, where they play, where they meet,” Glen Banfield, a deputy district attorney, said after the sentencing. “We were able to take a drug dealer, a pretty serious drug dealer in that neighborhood, off of the streets today.”
Drug trade and shootings have in recent years plagued Dawson Park, a cherished gathering space for the Black community displaced from Portland’s Albina neighborhood, as WW reported in a 2022 cover story.
Portland police obtained a warrant to search Sharma’s store in February 2025 after investigating drug dealing near Dawson Park. When Sharma was provided a copy of the warrant during a traffic stop on March 3, he responded, “Someone must have been snitching,” according to a probable cause affidavit. When officers searched the store, the affidavit states, they found “101.99 grams of presumptive positive cocaine, 19.57 grams of presumptive positive heroin, 16.79 grams of presumptive positive methamphetamine, and 889 pills of presumptive positive fentanyl pills.”
They also found digital scales with “suspected drug residue,” plastic baggies, razor blades, more than $6,000 in cash, and two firearms.
After Sharma’s arrest, WW reported, many dealers and buyers who had made the Stop N Go their go-to drug market moved one block north to the Dawson Park Apartments, a building managed by the embattled Portland housing authority Home Forward. Sharma’s attorney has since stated that his client has sold the business, according to Wednesday’s statement from the DA.
Sentencing for Sharma’s guilty plea for attempting to deliver fentanyl, and dispositions on his other charges, have been pushed back for a year, the district attorney’s office said Wednesday.
