At least five people are facing felony charges after Newton County deputies foiled an attempted drug delivery at the county jail.
Sheriff Joedy Pennington said inmates placed the order using the jail telephone, which is a recorded line.
“All the phone calls back there are monitored, and we review them every day,” he said. “We found where they were going to get a load of contraband into the jail Wednesday night.”
Deputies listened to the call in which inmates arranged to have pills, marijuana, tobacco and cell phones delivered to the jail at midnight Wednesday and set up to intercept the contraband before it got to the inmates, Pennington said.
“We sat in the woods around the jail for probably four hours waiting for them to get here,” he said.
Pennington said the delivery was made by an adult driver, Lajayda Smith Womack, and a minor, who acted as the runner bringing the drugs from the car to the jail fence. Deputies waited until the runner approached the fence with the contraband then moved in to make the arrests, he said.
“We took the runner down, then took the car down, then took the dorm,” he said. “So, we’ve got, I think five people charged in the back on conspiracy charges.”
Womack, along with James Harris, Joshua Womack, Terrance Moore and one other person are charged with felony conspiracy to introduce contraband into a correctional facility.
“It’s illegal to introduce cell phones into a correctional facility,” he said “Everybody’s charged with felonies except for the minor.”
Each time an inmate picks up the jail phone to make a call, an automated message states the line may be monitored and recorded, Pennington said. In this instance, the inmates went ahead and planned their crime on the recorded line.
