Home > GJsentinel.com breaking news > Archives > 2007 > June > 01
Friday, June 1, 2007
SWAT team arrests two for allegedly dealing meth
A calm, breezy morning on Norwalk Street was shattered today with the sound of splitting wood as the Grand Junction Police Department SWAT team split open the front door of two suspected meth dealers’ home.
Immediately following the batter-ram entrance, a dozen heavily armed SWAT team officers filed into the home of Sonia Mullins, 3343 Norwalk St., shortly after 11 a.m. As the police ducked inside, shouts rang out and two dogs and a cat scurried outside onto the street.
After clearing the house, whose entryway was littered with pieces of the front door, officers arrested Mullins and Jason Thomas on suspicion of methamphetamine possession and check fraud.
Meanwhile officers with the Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit entered the $343,000 Northridge Estates home and began searching for drugs.
“By tweaker standards, this is a very clean home,” one officer said, surveying the two-story, three-bedroom home and its back yard, complete with a pool and swing set.
The unit’s initial sweep of the home turned up two small bags of suspected methamphetamine, totaling about half a gram of the crystalline powder.
Officers found one of the plastic bags perched atop a notebook filled with drawings by one of the home’s two children. Neither child was home at the time of the search.
“This was great. This is what we live for,” Sgt. Kevin Imbriaco said, congratulating the Street Crimes Unit on a successful raid.
Read more overnight on GJSentinel.com or in Saturday’s issue of The Daily Sentinel.
Permalink | |
Record lake trout tops 50 pounds
During the 40 years Don Walker has fished at Blue Mesa Reservoir he’s caught plenty of big lake trout. But none measured up to the one he caught May 23.
Walker, 61, now holds the record for the biggest lake trout caught in Colorado: The fish weighed 50 pounds, 5 ounces, measured 44 1/4 inches long with a girth of 34 3/8 inches. The record lake trout, also known as a Mackinaw, weighed nearly 4 pounds more than the previous record lake trout caught in 2003 that weighed 46 pounds 14 ounces and measured 42 1/2 inches long.
“I’ve been fishing over there for a long time, so when it hit I knew I had a big fish on,” Walker said from his home in Florence.
— Special to the Sentinel
Permalink | | Categories: No e-mail notification
Man sentenced to prison for threat of hotel maid
A Grand Junction man will spend from five years to life in prison and must register as a sex offender for threatening a hotel maid with a knife, according to his sentencing today.
Mesa County District Judge Brian Flynn sentenced Michael Smith, 37, to the open prison term consistent with sex-offender treatment and parole required by the Department of Corrections.
Smith pleaded guilty in March to a felony sexual assault charge and a misdemeanor weapons possession charge for an incident that occurred at Quality Inn, 733 Horizon Drive, on Sept. 27. A maid told police she walked into a room at the hotel and was confronted by Smith who threatened her with knife and told her to lie down on a bed.
Smith fled after the woman picked up a lamp to defend herself, according to court records.
Smith was also arrested in connection with an Aug. 16 incident at Holiday Inn, 755 Horizon Drive. A maid told police she was cleaning a room at the hotel when Smith entered the room and ordered her to get on the bed and take her clothes off, according to court records. Smith then left the room. Charges in that case were dismissed.
Deputy District Attorney Drew Lauer said he thought the sentencing was fair. “He’ll be out of our community for a long time, at least until he’s rehabilitated, if that’s possible,” he said.
Permalink | |
Ex-prep standout arrested again
A former Palisade High School football star who was serving a work-release sentence for assaulting an ex-girlfriend was arrested Thursday afternoon for allegedly entering another ex-girlfriend’s house when she was home alone taking a shower.
The ex-girlfriend, who told police she had dated Jason Popick, 20, for six months prior to February, said Popick rang the doorbell on her house on Thursday afternoon, let himself in, took a pair of her underwear and tried to open her robe, according to his arrest affidavit.
Popick was arrested on suspicion of a felony count of second-degree burglary and misdemeanor counts of theft of less than $100 and harassment when he returned to the work-release facility late Thursday afternoon. He is expected to make his first court appearance this afternoon.
Popick is serving a three-year probation sentence and is about six months into a yearlong work-release sentence. Popick’s sentence stems from his guilty plea in October 2006 to a misdemeanor charge of third-degree assault in an agreement which prosecutors dropped charges of robbery and first-degree criminal trespass and other misdemeanor counts.
Permalink | |
Gunshot survivor ordered into drug treatment
A woman scheduled to be featured in a documentary about the pitfalls of methamphetamine was ordered today to enter a drug treatment program and spend six years on probation for possessing meth.
Rebecca Carroll, 26, cried as Deputy District Attorney Jon Levin recalled details of her being shot by her husband, Joseph Carroll, more than a year ago and her subsequent crime. She apologized to the court and admitted she is having trouble dealing with the death of her husband, who was shot and killed by police days after he shot Rebecca.
“We have a little boy together and he looks just like (Joseph),” Rebecca Carroll said. “When I look at him, I see my husband and it’s too much for me to take.
Rebecca Carroll was temporarily paralyzed from the waist down after Joseph Carroll shot her in the stomach on May 7, 2006. Three days later, a federal drug agent shot and killed Joseph Carroll at a local bowling alley after he pointed a gun at a sheriff’s deputy. Joseph Carroll was high on meth at the time of his death, medical tests later showed.
In an interview last fall with The Daily Sentinel, Rebecca Carroll, who spent several weeks in a hospital recovering from her gunshot wound, said she wanted nothing to do with meth but admitted she would use it if someone gave it to her.
She was arrested in February after police stopped her vehicle on Interstate 70 west of Grand Junction and found her in possession of meth and several syringes.
CLICK FOR VIDEO: REBECCA CARROLL IN 2006
Permalink | |
