Police arrest 2 on felony drug charges

Andrew Tyler Wilder, 20, 243 Sunnyside Avenue, Elberton, is charged with possession of Schedule 2 narcotics.

The case began when an officer on patrol at 10:17 p.m. observed a vehicle stopped in the road on Duncan Circle near Hill Street, an area “known to be a high drug area,” he wrote on the arrest report. The officer said he ran the vehicle’s tag, which came back expired. Meanwhile, the driver pulled away. The officer followed and eventually pulled the vehicle over in the parking lot of Walgreens at the corner of Homer Road and old Maysville Road.

The officer said he asked Wilder what they were doing in the area, and Wilder replied that he was taking Walls to visit someone in the neighborhood.

The officer asked if there was anything illegal in the vehicle.

“There shouldn’t be,” Wilder replied.

According to the officer, Wilder consented to a search of the vehicle and Walls to a search of her person. In her purse, the officer said, he found two prescription medication bottles bearing names of two different people. He said Walls told him that the bottles belonged to other people but she used them to store her medication.

The officer identified one of the medications as Roxycodone (oxycodone); the other container held crack cocaine. The officer placed her under arrest.

The report said Walls admitted ownership of the Roxycodone, but not the cocaine and claimed that someone “switched pill bottles” on her.

“I don’t smoke crack,” the officer quoted her as saying. “I do pills.”

A search of the glove box allegedly turned up a black case containing four syringes and a spoon with a melted pill attached, the report said. The officer asked Wilder who they belonged to.

“Wilder held out both arms, which had what appeared to be needle marks on them and advised that the items belonged to him,” the officer wrote. “He stated, ‘I shoot up.’”

The report also said that Wilder told him that the pill on the spoon was oxycodone, which he’d bought at a location on Old Harden Orchard Road, and admitted that he and Walls were on Duncan Circle so Walls could purchase cocaine. Walls further admitted that he’d abused oxycodone for seven years, injecting it for five years.

A third person — the driver of the vehicle — was charged with a tag violation. A search of his person turned up a container of pills identified as Flexeril, a muscle relaxer, which the police confiscated and destroyed, according to the report.