Men in car that reeks of weed can’t get stories straight as GA cops seize $35,000
A red Honda Accord that was tailgating an 18-wheeler caught the eye of a sheriff’s deputy north of Forsyth on Interstate 75 in Monroe County the afternoon of Nov. 23. Upon pulling the car over, the deputy made his way to the passenger-side window. As a window was rolled down, the deputy later wrote in a report, “I could smell an overwhelming odor of an unknown ‘cover scent.’ I could also smell a very strong odor of raw marijuana coming from inside the vehicle.” After the driver, 31, of Beaufort, South Carolina, stepped out of the car, the deputy asked him where he was headed that day. The driver said he was bound for Stone Mountain to stay at his aunt’s house for the Thanksgiving holiday. Back at the car, the deputy spoke to the passenger, 34, also from Beaufort, who said they were traveling to Atlanta to see a cousin. The deputy’s suspicion was already piqued when he asked the driver about the marijuana odor and the masking scent. The driver said, “I don’t smoke weed at all,” and that the passenger didn’t either. The masking scent, the driver said, was to cover up the smell of cigarette smoke. The deputy asked both guys in the car if they were, by chance, traveling with a large amount of money. No, they said. But while searching the car, the deputy looked on the back seat and, wrapped in a shirt, found a vacuum-sealed bag of cash — $35,360 in all — “that was rubber-banded up in separate stacks,” the report said, “packaged like (it) is being used to purchase illegal items.” The driver said the money wasn’t his. The passenger said the money belonged to him and that they were going to buy a car but didn’t know where. The cash was seized and the passenger, who was said to have “several” narcotics convictions, was given a receipt for the money while the matter was investigated.
Dispatches: A Chevy Impala was stopped by a Monroe deputy along I-75 because its windows appeared too-darkly tinted. The deputy caught wind of a marijuana odor as he walked toward the car. The driver, 27, from Hampton, was told his window tint looked too dark. The driver handed over a receipt from the tinting shop where the tint was installed. The driver said “he thought his tint was legal,” the deputy’s report said. But the receipt, the report went on, actually said that the tint was “illegal.” Informed of this, the driver said, “I didn’t know.” An ensuing search of the car turned up four small packages of marijuana. The driver was jailed on multiple drug charges. . . . Comings and goings from the week of Christmas 1881 appeared in a Telegraph column about odds and ends in Macon: “Mrs. H.E. Oliver has lost a prized hen. … Third Street was aroused last night by the cries of ‘police.’ A disorderly case was made. … For some days past, a man with a bad eye has been in the city playing a sharp game in the way of getting change. At several places he has represented that he had too much silver, and would ask as a special accommodation that a paper bill would be given in exchange. He then puts down the silver, takes up the bill and goes out. … In each and every instance, the change turns out short.”