Five more arrested in connection with ‘drug pipeline’

One week after Williamsburg police arrested four out of town residents for public intoxication, who were believed to be part of a prescription drug pipeline from Florida, they arrested five other out-of-towners on similar charges.

"The pipeline from the Boca Rotan and Ft. Lauderdale is hot back to Kentucky, and this is just a prime example of how hot it is back to our state," said Williamsburg Public Affairs Officer Shawn Jackson.

He charged the driver of the vehicle, Zona M. Mink, 42, of Nicholasville, with careless driving and driving while under the influence.

"This car that they were driving was registered to someone totally different out of Mt. Vernon, Kentucky. She had a driver’s license from Jessamine County, but gave the physical address of Nicholasville, but the other people said that she lived in Somerset," Jackson said.

Police charged each of the passengers with public intoxication, including: John Gertchen of Somerset, Sarah B. Evans, Tiffany A. Helton of Somerset, and Jeremy Kyle Goodin, 23.

"The other four passengers did all admit to taking some narcotics this morning," Jackson said. "The passengers’ didn’t know whose car it was, just an acquaintance of hers. I have reason to believe the owner of the vehicle was waiting on their share of narcotics also."

Jackson said that he happened upon the suspects by accident when he was fueling his cruiser about 7:38 a.m. at the interstate BP gas station.

"I noticed that a few subjects came into the store. As I was paying for my gas, I noticed each one of them seemed to get pretty nervous and anxious," he said.

All four people that Jackson observed in the store appeared to have been under the influence of something, he said.

"When I went to the parking lot they got even more nervous in their car, and they pulled out," Jackson said. "Once she got on the interstate, she got pretty nervous and started weaving in and out of her lane of travel and swerving a little bit."

Jackson stopped the Ford Escort near the 12.5-mile marker.

Through his investigation, Jackson said he discovered several things that raised "red flags" including that the five were traveling together, but were unrelated.

Jackson said that he has learned through several drug interdiction classes that the first thing drug runners will often give police as an excuse is being out of town is that they had been gone to a funeral.

"The driver told me that she had been to her grandmother’s funeral. The other subjects stated that they had been to a funeral also, however, each subject told me a different city of the funeral," Jackson said. "It was a red flag, but I already had red flags popping up all over the world."

Police determined that the five had been to the same pain clinic in Boca Rotan, Florida, that the suspects arrested last week had visited.

"Each had obtained several prescriptions for narcotics. Some prescriptions were filled already in the proper pill containers. They all had prescriptions that had been written out that hadn’t been filled yet," Jackson said. "It was just unreal amounts."

Most of the unfilled prescriptions were for Oxycodone or Roxycodone, which Jackson said are currently very popular street drugs.

The suspects had between 300 and 350 pills on them. Police took down the information about the pills, but opted not to seize the medication due it being a relatively small quantity, he said.

By comparison, the four people Williamsburg police arrested last week had over 1,100 total pills with a street value of over $26,000.

"We got the information we need to turn over to some other agencies," Jackson noted.

"It’s the same method of operation that we have been dealing with lately. One of the subjects even stated that yesterday after they got out of the pain clinic they all went to the beach, got high, passed out and all got sunburns because they laid on the beach passed out all day," Jackson said. "Two or three of them were pretty severely sunburned. It was kind of a narcotics obtained vacation went bad I guess you could say."

Many Kentucky drug users have switched to doctors in Florida in part because Kentucky doctors are writing few prescriptions for pain pills after increased crackdowns by authorities, Jackson said.

Kentucky also has an electronic prescription drug monitoring system, which Florida doesn’t currently have.

Officers assisting with the investigation included: Chief Wayne Bird, Sgt. Brad Boyd and Whitley County Sheriff’s Deputy Johnny Miller.