Woman Arrested Outside a Florida School on Cocaine Charge

A sheriff’s deputy working near Lexington Middle School in Fort Myers arrested a 39-year-old woman after claiming to see her snort a white substance off of her phone screen. The woman occupied a vehicle waiting in the pick-up line for students during afternoon dismissal.

The deputy alleged to have witnessed the woman using a credit card to chop up the substance on the phone surface and then use a straw to snort it. The deputy confronted the woman and then took her to an office. According to the deputy’s report, the woman admitted to having a small amount of drugs in her car. After students had cleared the area, the deputy took the woman’s purse from the vehicle and found a substance in a bag described as weighing 0.05 grams. A field test conducted on the residue by the deputy allegedly showed it to be cocaine.

The woman was then arrested and charged with possessing cocaine and drug paraphernalia. The court set her bond at $6,500. Authorities have not established if the women had a child in attendance at the middle school.

Any person facing drug charges could suffer serious consequences from a conviction, including difficulty obtaining employment, fines and jail time. A criminal defense attorney might take actions to defend the client from accusations. An attorney might question the validity of field tests used to identify possible drugs. Any mistakes on the part of law enforcement could give an attorney leverage to convince a prosecutor to reduce or drop charges. If that strategy is not viable, an attorney might negotiate a plea bargain that reduces a sentence in exchange for the defendant attending a drug treatment program.