DUBOIS – A warrant has been issued for a DuBois woman who failed to show for a preliminary hearing Friday on felony drug charges.
Joyce Lorain Yearwood, 28, was charged by DuBois City police after a car she was traveling in was stopped on July 16 and found to contain drugs.
Police say they found 40 stamp bags containing heroin, Fentanyl and Tramadol in them and three Ziploc bags of heroin and Fentanyl in her possession.
A hearing was held in her absence Friday with two felony counts of manufacture/delivery/possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance, two misdemeanor counts of intentional possession of a controlled substance and a misdemeanor count of possession of drug paraphernalia all being held to court and sent on to the court of common pleas for further disposition by Senior District Judge Richard A. Ireland, who then issued a bench warrant for her arrest.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, Yearwood was a passenger in a vehicle that was stopped for a traffic violation.
After checking their identification, the officer discovered the driver was wanted by Indiana- and Ridgway-based state police. Yearwood also had a warrant from Sandy Township.
An officer from Sandy Township was contacted and arranged to pick her up.
Ridgway police could not find the driver’s warrant and Indiana police never responded about the driver, according to the complaint.
Before she left the vehicle to be taken into custody, Yearwood reportedly took two yellow wallets from her purse and placed them between the front seats of the car.
When the Sandy Township officer searched Yearwood, he reportedly found a bundle of heroin in her purse. She was then transported to their station.
The driver exited the vehicle and gave the officer permission to search the car. They found a small amount of methamphetamine between the front seats. The two yellow wallets were also recovered.
One had several empty stamp bags and both contained money, police said.
Another hand bag with a combination lock on it was found in the back-seat area on the floor.
The driver stated that Yearwood threw that in the back when the car was being pulled over. He said it belonged to her and therefore, he could not give permission to open it.
Sandy Township Police were contacted and told to bring Yearwood back to the scene.
When she returned, at first, she denied the bag was hers, but eventually admitted ownership of it.
She supplied the combination to open it and inside they found a large sum of cash along with more suspected heroin, according to the report.
The total amount of cash Yearwood had was reportedly $7,504.36.
The items were sent to the Erie Crime Lab where they confirmed the bags contained heroin, Tramadol and Fentanyl, police said.