LPD seizes 100 pounds of weed at traffic stop, busts home liquor store
The Laurel Police Department made two significant busts this week involving a lot of booze and a lot of drugs.
Occupying two long tables in the LPD’s squad room Thursday were more than 300 bottles of liquor, which, police said, a man sold from his house illegally until an undercover purchase led to his arrest. On another table sat a load of marijuana — 100 pounds found in total — and 5 pounds of cocaine, which Sgt. Rodrigus Carr said have a combined street value of about $130,000, taken from a traffic stop on a Georgia man.
In the squad room, officer Andrew Yates stood quietly next to the massive drug haul. Yates has worked at the LPD for 16 months, making the bust even more significant.
“Do you get that much out of every traffic stop, officer Yates?” Cox asked.
“No sir,” Yates said.
“He was a little excited about it,” Cox said. “I promise he’s told everybody and texted all his relatives. He was here over a year before I knew he could talk. Kidding aside, he did a great job.”
Yates pulled over James Lee, 40, of Georgia when he saw the northbound truck speeding on Interstate 59 near the Chantilly Road exit. A search revealed the drugs in the truck bed under a tarp.
Yates said Lee was calm in the face of arrest and that he complied without incident. Lee’s case might go to the federal level as LPD hands it over to the Drug Enforcement Agency, which helped with the seizure. Lee faces a count of trafficking marijuana and a count of trafficking cocaine because of the large quantity of drugs.
Nothing indicated Lee would have sold the drugs in Jones County, but Cox said that a bust here means another community won’t have to deal with it.
“There’s officers in other places right now stopping people from (bringing drugs) into Jones County,” he said.
He praised his narcotics division with some friendly ribbing: “The narcotics folks are out there working every single day. They get onto me from time to time, saying, ‘You’re not putting our stuff out there and letting people know.’ So we had to do this big for Sgt. Carr so his feelings wouldn’t be hurt. But they do a lot of stuff that goes unnoticed because we don’t do a press release for every single thing. But this was unusual.”
Lee had his initial appearance in Laurel Municipal Court on Friday where his bond was set by Judge Kyle Robertson at $500,000.
On Wednesday, officers executed a search warrant at 515 Arco Lane after, they said, Ronald Fair, 53, of Laurel sold them hydrocodone. Police confiscated pills, two handguns, $3,000 and 320 bottles of liquor.
“I guess that’s commonly known as bootlegging,” Cox said. “With this job, you never know what you’ll run into. It’s probably not a stretch to say Mr. Fair wasn’t checking IDs.”
Fair faces felony charges for possession and sale of a controlled substance. Despite the thousands of dollars of liquor found, Fair faces a misdemeanor for selling liquor without a license. Investigators have contacted Alcoholic Beverage Control.
Fair had his initial appearance in Laurel Municipal Court on Friday where his bond was set at $10,000 on the drug-sale charge. The other charges were misdemeanors.
March 15, 2021 at 02:18AM
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