DANGEROUS 'MOLLY PAPER' DRUG SCARES POLICE
WAYNESVILLE - Haywood County authorities said Friday they fear a powerful but rarely encountered designer drug is making its way into the area and could be behind two fierce struggles with police.
In another arrest, a man died after fighting with officers, though investigators have declined to comment on the case while it is under examination by the State Bureau of Investigation.
The drug, called molly paper on the street and officially known as #64 DOC, is thought to have come from the creator of the psychedelic drug Ecstasy. "If ( people ) knew the kind of trip they were going to take, it is not something that is going to be fun," Haywood County sheriff's detective Mark Mease said. "It is a dangerous drug. It is a danger to law enforcement and a danger to the people using it." Mease said he suspects the drug might have been in a car he stopped in Clyde two weeks ago while acting on a tip from an informant about LSD. People in the car would not talk about a quarter-inch wide white strip of what looked like photographic paper, Mease said. He tested the paper for LSD using a field kit, but it failed to show any acid. Marijuana found in the car led to a criminal charge.
Canton police a week later searched a home and found more of the paper. Officers also tried a field test for acid and got a reaction that indicated some type of substance but not necessarily LSD. They sent the paper to the SBI lab, which determined it was #64 DOC.
Psychedelics are rare in Haywood County, where crack cocaine, methamphetamines, prescription drugs and marijuana account for most illegal drug use. Investigators said they know little about the drug, including how much a dose costs or where it was manufactured.
No one has been charged in connection with the drug, and police said they have gathered little information from suspects, including a man involved in a violent arrest in Waynesville July 1.
'Subject kept screaming' Police called to the Hyatt Creek Road traffic circle found a man standing in the center swinging an ax handle at passing vehicles. A police sergeant told him to drop the ax handle and he calmly complied, investigators said.
But as the sergeant talked to him, he started shouting and swinging his arms and feet, according to a police report. The man ran when a second officer arrived and jumped into the bed of a passing pickup truck. He jumped back out as the officer chased him.
"I stuck his leg with my baton in order to stop him from running into oncoming traffic," Officer Rob Skiver wrote in his report. "After a series of strikes, the subject stopped running. The subject kept screaming that he was going to get the person who was selling the meth." Police charged Jason Alan Roland, 21, with disturbing the peace and resisting arrest, both misdemeanors. According to the report, officers believed he was on some type of drug, possibly methamphetamines. Roland could not be reached.
At the police station, Roland told detective Crystal Shuler that a high school football player who had died in a car crash a year earlier was telling him what to do and that the man was standing right beside him, Shuler said Friday.
The two men were not related, Shuler said, but could have gone to school together based on their ages.
Roland, in his interview, also mentioned demons and Jesus. "They talk a lot about demons coming up out of the ground," Shuler said. Clyde death Two days later, a Haywood County Sheriff's detective and a sergeant responding to a civil disturbance call in Clyde found a man lying in the backyard of a neighbor's home. He initially complied when a deputy told him to roll over on his stomach and place his hands behind his back to be handcuffed, authorities said in a report.
But, like Roland, 26-year-old Charles Benjamin Patterson became increasingly agitated before fleeing while handcuffed, hitting a chicken wire fence and then rolling down a hill, according to a Sheriff's Office report. Patterson kicked and bit at the deputies, yelling "the devil will get us all" as they tried to get him under control, according to the report. The deputies hit him four times and used pepper spay in getting Patterson subdued, according to the report.
He died later at a hospital. A preliminary autopsy found the blows didn't kill him, the Sheriff's Office has said. A toxicology report has not been completed. The SBI is looking into the death, which is standard procedure when someone dies in law enforcement custody.
Patterson's immediate family has declined to comment for now, one of his relatives said Friday.
Battle at the jail Police suspect #64 DOC also played a role in the arrest of a Waynesville man July 7, four days after Patterson's arrest.
Officers responding to a domestic disturbance said Mathew Raymond Humphreys, 28, initially cooperated with Officer Tyler Trantham but become combative while being taken to the Haywood County Detention Center. Jailers locked Humphreys in a holding area while the officer got the warrants. He refused to remove his jewelry or give his personal items to jailers. He became angrier after a magistrate told him he would have to stay in jail overnight because he had been charged with domestic violence. Authorities said 6-foot-6, 220-pound Humphreys continued to fight with officers inside a cell.
"We definitely suspect ( Humphreys ) was on the same stuff," Shuler said. He could not be reached.
Cases connected? Investigators on Friday couldn't say for sure whether these cases are connected and have declined to comment on the Patterson case at all. But the two arrests involving fierce struggles from suspects who at first appeared calm and claims of seeing demons fit with what is known about users of #64 DOC.
"The psychotic behavior is what ties it all together," Mease said. It is unclear where the drug comes from or how long it has been used as a recreational narcotic. It would take someone with a background in chemistry to make it, investigators said.
The Concord Police Department in Contra Costa County, Calif., seized a small amount of the drug last year, according to a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency intelligence report. Officers at first though it was acid, but later learned it was #64 DOC. It was the first time officials there had encountered the drug. A year before, four teenagers in Michigan reportedly overdosed on the drug and required hospital attention. None died.
The drug is thought to have been first developed by Ecstasy creator Dr. Alexander Shulgin, a pharmacologist who once worked as a consultant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. He wrote about taking the drug in his 1991 book "Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story." "This is the works," he wrote in the book, an excerpt of which is published on erowid.org, a drug library Web site used by police. "There are visuals, and there are interpretive problems with knowing just where you really are. The place where nothing makes sense, and yet everything makes sense. Anyone who uses this had better have 24 hours at their disposal." Investigators say people who have doses of the drug shouldn't handle it because it can enter the body through the skin. They fear the drug could end up in the hands of high school and college students, who are traditionally more interested in experimenting with psychedelics.
The investigators say they aren't interested in arresting users but want information on dealers.
"Our first priority is public safety," Haywood sheriff's detective Tony Cope said. Anyone with information is asked to call the Waynesville Police Department at 356-1175 or the Sheriff's Office at 452-6666.
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