August 23, 2018
By Paragon News Director Paul Joseph –
One person has pleaded guilty and been sentenced while the man with whom she was arrested is due in court in less that a month.
34-year-old Grace Marie Denney pleaded guilty last week in Beckham County District Court in a plea agreement that will send her to prison for 6-years on a charge of trafficking in illegal drugs. Two other felonies were dismissed, child neglect and taking contraband drugs inside a jail. A fourth charge, misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia nets Denney a year in the Beckham County Detention Center to be served concurrently with her prison time.
The man she was with at the time of her arrest, 37-year-old Salvatore Frank Garite is due in the same courtroom in three weeks for pre-trial proceedings. He’s charged with trafficking and with child neglect. Both are from El Paso.
The couple, thought to be husband and wife, were first observed traveling eastbound on Beckham County Road 1050 near State Highway 34.
When they were pulled over – one morning in late January about 1:30 am – the driver told the Sheriff’s deputy he was lost.
Garite said the two were heading to Kansas City, Kansas where he had a job interview later that morning at 8 am. He said he and his wife, 34-year-old Grace Marie Denney along with their three children who were also in the van, were coming from El Paso, but they wanted to make a stop-over at Thackerville where he was told he could find Oklahoma’s largest casino.
As the deputy and driver were walking toward the patrol unit, the deputy observed a blanket over what appeared to be a large item in the back of the couple’s van. He noted the vehicle had a “lived-in” look about it.
The deputy told Garite that the route through Thackerville that Garite had described made no sense if they’d left El Paso and traveled through the panhandle.
When Garite admitted they brought no luggage with them, only one small bag, the deputy asked for consent to search the van.
Once the double doors on the back of the vehicle were opened, the deputy allegedly found what appeared to be four duct-taped bundles of marijuana.
A later, more detailed search turned up 208 pounds of – what the deputy wrote in a probable cause affidavit – a compressed green leafy substance. The deputy turned and ordered Garite to the ground at gun point and was taken into custody.
The court document says Denney, the front seat passenger, was passed out, doubled over and snoring.
When she was later searched at the county detention facility, an officer allegedly located a clear plastic baggy containing what officers thought to be methamphetamine.
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