A Bronx, New York, woman was arrested on felony drug charges in a raid early Sunday morning carried out by Winslow police.
Winslow police Sgt. Haley Fleming said five police officers executed a search warrant at a home at 17 Cushman Road, Winslow, at about 2:15 a.m. Sunday. Police seized 61.8 grams of crack, a freebase form of cocaine individually packaged for sale; 10.76 grams of heroin; and just over 4 ounces of marijuana, Fleming said. An undisclosed amount of cash also was seized in the raid along with some illegal pills.
There are 28 grams in an ounce.
Arrested was Kristina Torres, 36, of Grand Concourse, Bronx. She is charged with two counts of aggravated trafficking in scheduled drugs, both Class A felonies punishable by up to 30 years in prison on each count.
Another woman was arrested at the same location, but for unpaid fines unrelated to the drug bust, Fleming said by phone Monday.
Fleming said the timing of the search warrant so early in the morning was for good reason.
“It was conducted at that time to ensure that there was no destruction of evidence and also for officer and suspect safety because there were believed to be some people in there that we didn’t have identified prior to entering,” he said. “We were looking for illegal drugs and evidence of the sale of illegal drugs.”
No weapons were found at the residence.
“I would say it’s definitely a lot of crack,” Fleming said. “And I would say it was decent supply, or decent amount of heroin.”
Fleming said the charges are elevated to aggravated trafficking because of the amount by weight of the drugs present and because the home is within 1,000 feet of the Norton Street Playground, which is considered a safe zone in Winslow.
Fleming said he authored the search warrant and got it approved based on “a couple of months” of investigation.
Torres was taken to the Kennebec County jail in Augusta where bail was set at $20,000 worth of property with no cash bail allowed, meaning that someone in Maine would have to post up property that they owned to get her out of jail.
Fleming said property bond is set in cases where police and prosecutors believe that the person being arrested could get to a lot of cash quickly.
He said there will be more charges to come as a result of the search warrant because some of the drugs seized did not belong to Torres and police want “to bring them in and get their side of the story.”
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter:@Doug_Harlow
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