Drug Arrest

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

A vehicle that is traveling at a much higher rate of speed than is legally allowed on the interstate is bound to attract law enforcement’s attention sooner or later.
Now add that the vehicle is carrying drugs, and one has to wonder whatever was the driver thinking, or if he was even thinking.
That is the case with 32-year-old Shakeel Akai Charles, who was arrested by the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) just past midnight on Monday, Jan. 18, and charged with various drug-related felony offenses.
According to the FHP arrest report, Charles was traveling westbound on I-10 with a female companion at about 12:17 a.m. when an eastbound trooper clocked his silver SUV doing 103 mph in a 70 mph speed zone.
Making a U-turn on the highway, the trooper gave chase, never losing sight of the SUV, which finally pulled over to the side of the road about three miles east of the Lloyd exit, according to the report.
Right before it pulled over, however, the trooper saw what appeared to be a clear plastic bag tossed out the passenger’s window, a movement that the patrol vehicle’s interior camera recorded
When the officer asked what had been tossed out the vehicle, neither occupant responded. By then, however, the trooper could smell marijuana coming from the SUV’s interior.
Charles was placed in handcuffs after a second trooper arrived, and the two officers conducted a search of the vehicle.

They found nothing in the vehicle, but they were able to retrieve from the ground nearby the clear plastic bag that had been tossed out, according to the arrest report. Which bag they found to contain “multiple different substances, including pills, skittles that appeared to be laced and powder that was suspected to be cocaine.”
When the officers cut open the vacuum-sealed bag, they counted seven individually wrapped substances, some of which were identified on the scene as Xanax, ecstasy and Percocet, according to the report.
Charles was transported to the jail for confinement, and the woman was also taken there so she could get a ride home, as the vehicle had been impounded.
At the jail, the substances in the bag were weighed and tested and determined to consist of 8.875 ounces of cocaine; 4.3 grams of ecstasy (nine pills); 156.4 grams of Percocet (300 pills); about 10 pills of Xanax, weighing 4.1 grams; 13.1 grams of an unknown white substance; 4.2 grams (about 15 pills) of MDMA, which is described as a synthetic, psychoactive drug with a chemical structure similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline; and approximately 98 skittles laced with an unknown substance.
“Each substance was packaged in a manner to later be distributed into smaller quantities,” states the arrest report.
Charles was released on a $15,000 bond on Wednesday, Jan. 23.