DRUGS, GUNS FOUND AFTER WARRANT SERVED AT PB HOUSE

By Ray King/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

A Pine Bluff man currently on probation on a drug related conviction will have to post a $25,000 bond to be released from the county detention center while prosecutors prepare new drug and weapons related charges against him.

At a court hearing Friday, Circuit Judge Rob Wyatt Jr. set the bond for Corey Brown, 35, after ruling prosecutors had probable cause to charge Brown with three counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, possession of drug paraphernalia, and simultaneous possession of drugs and firearms.

Reading from an affidavit from Investigator Kevin Freeman of the Tri-County Drug Task Force, Deputy Prosecutor Nicole Pugh said Brown was arrested when task force agents and police vice and narcotics officers served a search warrant at 903 Burnell St., Wednesday at 11:05 a.m.

Freeman reported that they found two glass jars containing 123 white pills that field tested positive for Xanax, three plastic bags containing 46 yellow and green pills that tested positive for M.D.M.A., the active ingredient for ecstasy, and a large plastic bag containing several smaller bags of marijuana with a total weight of four ounces.

Additionally, Pugh said investigators found a set of digital scales, two guns, and $474 cash in the house when the warrant was served, and she said Brown told officers “everything in the house belonged to him.”

She said Brown was placed on probation for 48 months in Wyatt’s division of the court in 2007 after he pled guilty to second offense, possession of a controlled substance, and he had prior convictions on drug related charges stemming from an arrest in 1999.

Pugh had recommended a $20,000 bond for Brown, but the judge increased that to $25,000, telling Brown he “took offense when people he had placed on probation are arrested on five new felony charges.”