‘Career criminal’ sentenced to 18 years for Gallatin County drug trafficking

A Belgrade man with a long federal rap sheet was sentenced to more than 18 years in prison after investigators found him dealing cocaine in Gallatin County with a gun under his seat.

On May 6, 2025, law enforcement used a confidential informant to purchase an ounce of cocaine from 43-year-old Leodis Robert Roach. Later that month, the confidential informant conducted another controlled purchase from Roach and a co-defendant, according to a press release from the Department of Justice.

On June 4, Roach was a passenger in a vehicle stopped for a traffic violation in Bozeman. During the stop, officers arrested him on a federal probation warrant issued out of Portland. Police also searched the vehicle and found 25 grams of individually wrapped cocaine inside, along with a Glock pistol under the passenger seat where Roach had been sitting.

Investigators later located a separate vehicle owned by Roach and recovered more than 900 grams of cocaine, body armor and a Diamondback firearm.

At the time of his arrest in Montana, Roach was a federal fugitive with a violent criminal history spanning over two decades. In 2014, he was sentenced in Portland to more than 14 years in federal prison for a 2011 string of crimes, including the armed robbery of a Bank of America in Eugene, and possessing a loaded pistol near Spokane, Washington.

The 2014 press release from the Portland division of the FBI described Roach as a “career criminal.”

Before the 2014 sentencing in Oregon, Roach was also convicted in 2001 for first-degree assault after shooting a individual in Portland over a drug debt, as well as a 2010 felony conviction for attempting to elude police.

Roach was allowed to serve his federal prison time at the same time as his state sentences for robbery and gun charges. After completing the prison portion of those combined sentences in Oregon, he eventually relocated to the Gallatin Valley while still under federal supervision.

Roach pleaded guilty in Montana’s federal court this past January to charges of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute and carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking crime. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Missoula sentenced him to 18 years and four months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release.