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DRUG NEWS SOUNDBITES

December 1996

Louisville, Kentucky - Fidel Salem, 21, and Mohammad Khalid, 18, were arrested on cocaine charges and spent two days in jail before police confirmed that the white powder they were arrested with was yogurt and not a controlled substance. Police stopped the two men for speeding on October 31 and arrested them after a drug-sniffing dog discovered the substance packaged in plastic ("Police Find 'Cocaine' was Yogurt; 2 Freed," Washington Post, November 4, 1996, p. A7).

West Lafayette, Indiana - On October 15, Purdue University freshman Jarrod Allan Eskew shot and killed Jay Severson, the student dormitory counselor who had discovered cocaine in Eskew's possession the day before, and then killed himself. The counselor had reported the cocaine to campus police, who searched Eskew's dormitory room and car and confirmed the drug possession, according to Purdue spokeswoman Ellen Rantz. Eskew, 18, fired two shots at Severson, 27, in the Wiley Hall men's dormitory and then locked himself in his room. A SWAT team fired tear gas into the room and later found that Eskew had shot himself, according to Purdue spokesman Joe Bennett (Associated Press, "Purdue student kills counselor, then self," Chicago Tribune, October 17, 1996, s. 1, p. 2; "Purdue student shoots, kills dormitory counselor," Chicago Sun-Times, October 17, 1996, p. 24).

Washington, D.C. - Authorities arrested and charged 76-year-old Frances Corrine Medina with smuggling marijuana into the Lorton Correctional Complex while visiting her grandson Francis C. Marshall. Prosecutors said Medina hid balloons filed with marijuana in her bra and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Medina, who has no prior criminal record, was released on October 28 without bond after a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. According to prosecutors, 52 visitors to Lorton have been convicted of smuggling drugs into the prison since 1994, but that Medina's case is unusual because of her age (Charles W. Hall, ""Grandmother Accused of Lorton Smuggling," Washington Post, October 29, 1996, p. B5).