Report of suspicious activity leads to drug bust

By: 
Staff Writer Kate Wehlann

After a neighbor reported that suspicious activity was going on at 1200 W. Walnut St. in Salem, police took action.

“The neighbor stated that vehicles were always coming and going at all hours of the day and night, staying no longer than five minutes at a time,” says State Trooper Brett Walters in his report.

On Tuesday, May 1, Washington County Deputy Nathan Maudlin and Walters conducted a trash pull on the home and found a corner baggy and a glass smoking pipe that both field tested positive for methamphetamine.

Walters requested a search warrant and Judge Frank Newkirk signed it.

The next day, just before 9 a.m., Walters served the warrant with Salem Police Officers Chad Webb and Eric Mills and Deputies Maudlin and Brad Naugle.

Maudlin had been watching the house while the other officers were en route. He told Walters he saw four people getting into a passenger vehicle parked in front of the house and Walters told Maudlin to go ahead and pull up to the residence because one of the occupants of the vehicle was Breraton Long, 25, Salem, who police had an active arrest warrant for driving without a license. The other officers arrived and helped get the other passengers out of the vehicle and Walters went up to the door, announced he was with the state police and had a search warrant for the residence. Two more adults were in the home, along with a 4-year-old girl.

Mills took his K9 partner, Prigo, into the home to search and other officers determined the identities of those in the vehicle.

Walters read the search warrant to Vivian Curtsinger, 24, Salem, and Long, who were listed on the search warrant. Also there were Jessica Lawrence, 28, Salem, and David Elliott, 29, Salem, who claimed to also be living there, and Ryan Bowles, 24, Lakeworth, Florida.

Inside the home, in the bedroom listed as Lawrence and Elliott’s bedroom, police found and seized multiple plastic bags with white residue inside that field tested positive for methamphetamine, a glass smoking pipe that field tested positive for methamphetamine, a pink rubber pipe with burnt residue in the bowl (suspected marijuana), a hydrocodone pill wrapped in cellophane in a blue coin purse attached to a mace bottle and multiple cell phones and SIM cards. In the bedroom listed as Curtsinger and Long’s were multiple glass smoking pipes that tested positive for methamphetamine, a cut straw with white residue inside, an iPad located under the mattress and a Dell laptop, which were also seized. Walters also seized Bowles’ cell phone, which was found in a white passenger vehicle.

The Department of Child Services was called to the residence to care for the child, who was placed with a relative.

Long was taken to the Washington County Jail for: possession of methamphetamine, maintaining a common nuisance, possession of Schedule I-IV controlled substances and possession of paraphernalia. Long has been arrested several times since June 2015 for things like driving without ever receiving a license, trespassing, visiting a common nuisance and various possession charges.

Curtsinger was taken to the Washington County Jail for: possession of methamphetamine, maintaining a common nuisance, neglect of a dependent and possession of paraphernalia.

Elliott was taken to the Washington County Jail for: possession of methamphetamine, maintaining a common nuisance and possession of paraphernalia. Elliott was arrested previously in 2016 and again on a conversion charge in 2017.

Lawrence was taken to the Washington County Jail for: possession of methamphetamine, maintaining a common nuisance, possession of Schedule I-IV controlled substance and possession of paraphernalia.

Bowles was taken to the Washington County Jail for visiting a common nuisance. Bowles has been arrested in the past, starting with October 2015, when he was arrested for battery resulting in bodily injury and fleeing and then in October 2017, when he was arrested on an out-of-county warrant and for four drunken driving charges, and leaving the scene of an accident.

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