Turner County Sheriff’s Office makes huge drug bust

ASHBURN, Ga. (WALB) - South Georgia law enforcement is seeing more frequent and larger drug seizures on I-75. The Turner County Sheriff’s office recently seized over 210 pounds of methamphetamine.

Officers in Turner County told WALB things like drug trafficking aren’t uncommon on a major highway like this.

The traffic stop happened on Monday at around 9:30 p.m. WALB is told one officer was sitting out on the interstate checking traffic when they noticed a vehicle going 89 miles per hour with no headlights. That’s when the officer decided to pull them over.

“Before he could get up and talk to the driver, the driver tried to elude the deputy,” Tuner County Sheriff Andy Hester said. “So the deputy ended up in a chase. And ended up in Tift County, and then in the city of Tifton there, where the vehicle was driving very recklessly on and off the interstate. And ended up driving southbound in a northbound traffic lane.”

The sheriff says this is the largest amount of drugs he’s seen in one stop in his 33 years. He adds that there’s no telling how many lives they saved.

“We’re glad to get it off the streets,” he said. “It’s a small peck away at it. We’re going to keep doing what we do. Working traffic is proactive law enforcement. I’ve out there looking for bad guys that are traveling. Whether they’re burglars, or robbers, or whatever they are; child molesters. And when we encounter them on traffic stops, we’re able to deter a lot of that and catch them.”

Hester says there are many telling signs when engaging in a drug bust. He says one of them is that criminals often use rental cars to transport drugs.

WALB also spoke with other Southwest Georgia law enforcement agencies who say I-75 can sometimes be a hot spot for this kind of activity.

“We do see quite a bit of it on the interstate,” Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk said. “Last week, we intercepted a shipment of over 100 pounds of marijuana. And of course, we’re seeing fentanyl. We’ve seen several kilos of that in the last two, three months.”

The incident is still currently under investigation.

Officers tell WALB some of the main drugs they catch when stopping people on major highways like this are weed, meth, and opioids.

“I don’t think that’s going to reduce any at all because it’s easy to get something approved by the FDA that they sell over the counter. And then they sell it to everybody,” Hester said.

When it comes to confiscating drugs, Hester says it’s different now than it’s been in previous times.

“We wear gloves,” Hester said. “We do a lot of stuff we didn’t used to do. Mask up. Things like that whenever we run across stuff because we’re scared of touching it ourselves and it killing one of our officers.”

“They should be concerned about any kind of drug now because they’re lacing marijuana with fentanyl and it’s very toxic,” Paulk said. “And you see the case of one pill, and you’re dead. So street drugs have always been dangerous, but they’re definitely more dangerous than they used to be.”

Paulk adds that if anyone has any tips on drug trafficking, they should call the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office, or their local law enforcement.