September 15, 2017
By Paragon News Director Paul Joseph –
A North Carolina man is in the Beckham County Detention Center this weekend on a $200-thousand dollar bond charged with a number of felonies.
The arrest began with a burned out tail light.
According to a probable cause affidavit, a silver SUV drove past an Elk City patrol unit with a defective center-mounted brake light.
When pulled over, the driver told the officer that his name was Adam Simpson and that he had no wallet on him and he was going to get an insurance policy on the vehicle later on that very day, however the officer already knew the man by a different name, Benjamin Lance Abernathy. The officer had been recently searching for the 33-year-old Abernathy in reference to a Pennsylvania warrant who had been seen driving a silver Jeep Cherokee.
A picture sent by dispatch to the officer confirmed the man as Abernathy who was arrested on the warrant.
An inventory of the SUV turned up a whisky bag that allegedly held what the officer wrote in the report as a glass methamphetamine pipe with a crystal, white residue inside.
On the drivers’ side of the vehicle, police also allegedly found a bandage container that held a small plastic bag of marijuana, extra baggies, a small plastic bag with three pills and a package of rolling papers. In a green backpack, was a loaded, 9mm pistol along with a box containing a baggy with a crystal like substance as well as an additional small piece of plasctic with a smaller amount of a similar substance. Finally, officers found a digital scale.
Abernathy was taken to the Elk City Police Department and booked into jail where officers there found approximately $350-in case that they seized.
The cyrstal substance found inside a box tested positive for meth. Both packages of what police believe to be meth weighed just over 34 grams.
Two pills were identified as Viagra and a third one as Acetaminophen with Codeine.
He was to be charged with fugitive from justice as well as trafficking meth, possession of a firearm during commission of a felony, possession of a CDS, falsely personating another and paraphernalia possession.
He’s due in court for a preliminary hearing on October 17.
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