LR man indicted in federal court on drug charges

Traffic stop results in witness

Three weeks after Little Rock SWAT team officers surrounded a house at 8 Rolling Lane and confiscated heroin and a loaded shotgun, a federal grand jury has indicted resident Kyle Matthew Cox on drug-trafficking charges.

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The indictment handed up Thursday charges Cox with conspiring to possess more than 100 grams of heroin with the intent to distribute it and being a felon in possession of a firearm, a .12-gauge shotgun, in furtherance of a drug-trafficking crime.

According to a criminal complaint that led to Cox's arrest by the special weapons and tactics team on July 17, he came to the attention of Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Little Rock a day earlier, after a Texas state trooper stopped a vehicle that was en route from San Antonio to Little Rock.

In outlining probable cause for an arrest warrant, Special Agent Dale Van Dorple wrote that the trooper, Brad Brewer, stopped the vehicle on Interstate 35 in Ellis County, Texas. The driver gave consent to search, and Brewer found about 1 kilogram of heroin in a plastic bag in the back seat. The affidavit said the passenger admitted he was delivering the drug to a man in Little Rock named "Kyle," whose last name he didn't know, to pay off a drug debt.

The passenger told authorities that he had delivered marijuana to "Kyle" four or five times and knew where he lived and that he drove a blue Dodge Magnum, Van Dorple said. He said the passenger also said he had seen a shotgun at Cox's home.

At the behest of the DEA, the passenger placed a DEA-monitored telephone call to Cox saying he would arrive in Little Rock the next day, Van Dorple said. Meanwhile, he said, DEA agents in Little Rock observed the blue Dodge parked at the Little Rock address given by the passenger and discovered that its license plate had been reported stolen from another vehicle. The agents found that Kyle Cox lived at the house, and found a Texas driver's license photograph of him, which Van Dorple said the cooperating witness identified as the man he knew as "Kyle."

On July 17, the passenger-turned-cooperating witness, accompanied by an undercover officer, delivered a package containing some heroin to Cox, and minutes later, the SWAT team took up position around the house, according to the affidavit. While the officers surrounded the house and breached the front door, someone smashed out a rear bedroom window and tossed out the package of heroin, the affidavit states.

Inside the house, according to the affidavit and a detention order later issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Ray, officers found about 20 pounds of marijuana and the loaded .12-gauge shotgun inside the house, as well as Cox, his pregnant girlfriend and her 16-year-old brother. They noted that Cox was bleeding from cuts to his forearm, and fresh blood was found on the shotgun, which lay on a bedroom floor.

In his order detaining Cox until the grand jury could review his case, Ray wrote, "No one keeps a loaded shotgun in the middle of a floor in a bedroom. The fresh blood on the barrel of the shotgun is strong circumstantial evidence that after [defendant] cut his right arm breaking the window and throwing the heroin into the yard, he picked up the shotgun from a closet or under a bed and at least entertained the thought of defending himself with it against the police."

Ray also noted that at the time of his arrest on the federal drug charges, Cox was on bond from state court in Wagoner, Okla., where he faces felony drug charges.

Cox is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment Aug. 19 before U.S. Magistrate H. David Young in Little Rock.

Metro on 08/09/2014

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