Deputies with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office were kept busy over the weekend with several drug related arrests. Eight area residents were arrested and face a variety of drug charges.

The first arrests came on June 18, when Keith Lamond Reynolds, 35, of 56 Ward Lane, Atmore, was arrested and charged with first degree unlawful possession of marijuana. While on patrol on Martin Luther King Drive in Atmore, officers with the sheriff’s department noticed a vehicle turned into a driveway with half of the vehicle remaining in the road. As the officer approached the vehicle, he noticed the the driver was holding marijuana in his lap.

“He was charged with first degree unlawful possession because he had a prior conviction for second degree possession of marijuana,” said Mike Lambert, Chief Deputy at the sheriff’s office.

Reynolds is now in the Escambia County Detention Center while awaiting bond.

Traci Boyington Norwood, 22, of 879 Jack Springs Road, in Atmore, was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance. Around 10 a.m. June 18, deputies were conducting a routine driver’s license checkpoint when Norwood drove up. Norwood gave consent to a search of her vehicle and volunteered that she had Xanax and didn’t have a prescription for them, Lambert said. She was arrested and transported to the Escambia County Detention Center to await a bond hearing.

Lasherman L. Thomas, 28, of 465 Montgomery Street, Atmore, was stopped at the same checkpoint on June 18.

Thomas voluntarily surrendered marijuana that he had in his pocket, and was charged with first degree possession of marijuana because of a prior conviction of second degree possession of marijuana and was currently on probation, Lambert said.

On June 19 at approximately 10 p.m. Edwin Scott Bartley, 23, of 2453 HillviewDrive in Perdido, was arrested and charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance, crystal methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.

“Other charges are still pending,” Lambert said. “The case will be presented to the Grand Jury.”

At approximately 10:30 p.m. on June 19, a search warrant was executed at 176 Liberty Street, Atmore. Agents of the 21st Judicial Circuit Drug Task Force, the Atmore Police Department, Escambia County Sheriff’s Office and the K-9 unit of the Alabama Department of Corrections all participated in the arrest. “There was an ongoing investigation of illegal narcotic activity at this site,” Lambert said. “Officers served a search warrant and arrested brothers, Sinclair Demetrius Brown, 24, Tylee Ikeem Brown, 20, and Renard Tycuryio Brown, 19.”

Each was charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance for powder cocaine, first degree unlawful possession of marijuana and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia. Each man was being detained in the Escambia County Detention Center as of press time.

Greggory Grace, 24, of 1967 James Road, Atmore, was also arrested on drug charges.

Lambert said officer Michael Sanderson was on patrol in the Nokomis area around 3 a.m. when he noticed the subject walking down the road. The officer stopped and asked him for identification. The subject refused to obey a command by the officer to stop. After several commands the subject stopped and the officer observed that he dropped something on the ground. Deputy Sanderson detained Grace and picked up what had been thrown on the ground. Sanderson retrieved a a plastic bag holding 24 small bags of marijuana, Lambert said. “The subject then asked him Sanderson, ‘can’t you just act like you didn’t see it and throw it in the ditch?’ Sanderson answered ‘no’ and arrested Grace.”

Grade was awaiting bond hearing at the Escambia County Detention Center where he was booked and charged with first degree possession of marijuana.