Lt. Ashley Harris is back in other people's labs. A chemist for the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office, Harris has helped investigate 11 methamphetamine labs in the county this year, up from only one in 2006 and four in 2005. New laws limiting the availability of key ingredients and creating stiffer penalties for meth production led to a lull in activity throughout the state and nation since 2004, when Spartanburg County saw 17 labs. Why business is again booming isn't clear. [continues 1099 words]
A man who police say injected a friend with a deadly dose of heroin and left her body in a Spartanburg motel room for at least three days has been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Spartanburg Public Safety officers say Michael Hughey Parker, 36, continued to shoot heroin and was in and out of room 229 at the Villager Inn in the days after Kimberly Lee McFalls, 40, of Pauline died of an overdose. Police found McFalls' body on Nov. 13, 2006, lying on the floor of the East Main Street motel and covered in a blanket. [continues 194 words]
A traffic stop on Interstate 85 led to the seizure of nearly $900,000 in cash Tuesday by Davidson County sheriff's deputies. Officers with the department's Interstate Criminal Enforcement team found $871,471 in a late-model Chevrolet Impala, said Sheriff David Grice. Other recent cash seizures pale in comparison. "It's definitely the largest this year so far, and probably all year, and probably the second-largest in the sheriff's department history," Grice said. In February 2004, ICE officers found a record $1.2 million in a Chevrolet minivan traveling on I-85, an increasingly popular route for drug smuggling. [continues 325 words]
THOMASVILLE - Stacy - not her real name - used to live in a neighborhood where open-air drug markets were the norm. She couldn't sleep at night because of passing cars and beer bottles breaking. Once, a child found a $200 crack rock lying in her yard. Her neighbor found a needle lying by her front door. The neighborhood was like a drive-thru, Stacy said. "I would be in the kitchen cooking, and my kids would be like, 'Mom, there's a man in front of the door, and the man's taking something out of his pockets and giving it to the man,'" she said. [continues 609 words]
When N.C. Highway Patrol trooper R.T. Simmons stops a car for speeding or other traffic violation, his eyes automatically survey the vehicle for beer bottles or visible drug paraphernalia. But from now on, he'll be taking a closer look for other suspicious vehicle contents thanks to a statewide effort to train troopers to better identify mobile methamphetamine labs and the products used in manufacturing the high-powered stimulant. A truck bed filled with old chemical bottles and empty boxes of Sudafed, a meth ingredient, is enough to make Simmons suspect more than a traffic offense, he said. [continues 370 words]
Two men whose vehicle was stopped last month by Davidson County sheriff's deputies are scheduled for arraignment this week in U.S. District Court on federal money smuggling charges involving $1.2 million. The $1.2 million, which was seized by deputies and handed over to federal authorities, is the largest seizure ever for the sheriff's office, said interim Sheriff Dallas Hedrick. About 80 percent of the money will be returned to the department. The stop occurred at about 9:45 p.m. on Feb. 11 on Interstate 85 in Davidson County. According to federal grand jury indictments and information provided by Hedrick, deputies stopped the 2003 Chevrolet Venture minivan for making an unsafe movement and issued the driver, Jose Alfredo Martinez, a warning citation. [continues 355 words]
A Mocksville lawyer representing a Hispanic man charged with cocaine trafficking has filed a motion to dismiss that charge in light of allegations from top Davidson County sheriff's deputies that they were ordered to employ racial profiling in making traffic stops. Lori Hamilton-Dewitt argues that the constitutional rights of her client, Fermil Arrez Vargas, were violated in March when deputies stopped and searched the vehicle in which he was riding. Deputies found more than 400 grams of cocaine hidden in the vehicle's battery, sheriff's reports state. [continues 549 words]
A Davidson County man who says now-suspended Davidson County Sheriff Gerald Hege and imprisoned former narcotics officer Scott Woodall violated his civil rights has filed a federal lawsuit seeking more than $100,000 in damages. Darick Lynn Owens, 36, also claims Hege was negligent in hiring and retaining Woodall as a narcotics officer. He filed the lawsuit Sept. 15 in North Carolina's Middle District of U.S. District Court. Owens was convicted on drug charges stemming from an incident in 2000, but his sentence was overturned after Woodall and two other Davidson County deputies, Doug Westmoreland and Billy Rankin, pleaded guilty to drug distribution charges. The former officers are now serving time in federal prison. [continues 476 words]
Indictments against suspended Davidson County Sheriff Gerald Hege paint a picture of a man who, on a few occasions, improperly used a total of $6,200 in vice funds to pay for election celebration dinners in 1998 and 2002 and for his own travels in recent years. But affidavits released this week describe a much darker reality. According to some of Hege's top deputies, the sheriff had regularly embezzled or attempted to embezzle vice funds since at least 1998, taking possibly tens of thousands of dollars over a five-year period and ordering subordinates such as Major Brad Glisson and former vice officers Scott Woodall and Doug Westmoreland, both of whom are now serving time in federal prison, to cover for him. [continues 1184 words]
A Davidson County sheriff's deputy has been fired following her arrest on a felony drug charge in Stokes County. Maureen Cleary Williams, 37, was arrested July 10 by an officer with the King Police Department and charged with obtaining a controlled substance by forgery or fraud. According to police records, Williams attempted to forge a prescription for a controlled substance at an Eckerd drug store. The incident occurred June 27 in King. Records do not show what controlled substance Williams is charged with trying to obtain. [continues 169 words]
LeRoy Glenn is not an unfamiliar face to many of Davidson County´s teenagers. Glenn, a substance abuse counselor at the mental health center and speaker at Tuesday night´s talk on drug abuse at Lexington Memorial Hospital, knows firsthand the problems local adolescents face - and the drugs that many of them turn to to cope with those problems. "There are a lot of kids in this area using drugs," he told his audience of about 20 health care and social work professionals. "A lot of kids." [continues 665 words]
