A local man was facing multiple felony charges Thursday following a traffic stop after a large and varied quantity of drugs were allegedly found in his truck, including LSD, mushrooms, marijuana and almost 200 pills.
Christopher Dante Williams, 20, who lists a Meadow Hill Place, was taken into custody shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday and charged with five counts of possession of a controlled substance with purpose to deliver, including one count punishable by up to 30 years in prison, two counts punishable by up to 20 years, one count punishable by up to 10 years and one count punishable by up to six years, and two counts of possession of drug paraphernalia, each punishable by up to 20 years.
He was being held Friday on bonds totaling $31,000 and is set to appear Nov. 25 in Garland County District Court.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Arkansas State Police Trooper Lukas Tankersley was stopped in the 100 block of Adcock Road when he saw a red Chevrolet pickup truck with no tags drive past him northbound and then pull into the Shell station at Adcock and Airport roads.
Tankersley stopped the truck near the gas pumps and made contact with the driver, identified as Williams, and immediately noted a "strong odor of marijuana" coming from the vehicle. When asked, Williams denied there was any marijuana in the truck but when the trooper asked him to open a backpack in the passenger seat, Williams said he "would rather not."
Tankersley detained Williams and searched the backpack, noting there was a small amount of marijuana wax and CBD wax inside the front zipper. He noted the main compartment had a lock on it, but was able to pull the zippers open enough to see baggies of "a white and brown organic substance believed to be mushrooms" and a locked box.
Tankersley used bolt cutters to open the backpack and retrieved four bags of mushrooms with a total weight of 125.4 grams, another baggie with 29.4 grams of "high-grade marijuana," a bag with 16 square pill containers and 50 round pill containers, "commonly used to distribute narcotics."
Inside the lockbox, he allegedly found 102 alprazolam pills, 72 Xanax pills, five THC vaping cartridges, 20 hydrocodone pills, 20 pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes "that appeared to be dipped in an unknown substance," and 49 individual doses of suspected LSD wrapped in tinfoil.
The trooper also confiscated $385 in cash and a cellphone from Williams. Agents with the 18th Judicial District East Drug Task Force were notified and met Tankersley at the jail to take over the case. The narcotics were sent to the state crime lab for exact identification, the affidavit states.
Local on 11/16/2019