A west Georgia jailer was arrested Monday, accused of smuggling marijuana and MDMA to inmates — including at least one of the suspects in a September club shooting that left 10 people wounded.
That inmate’s mother and girlfriend also played key roles in the contraband ring, authorities said.
Meriwether County Sheriff Chuck Smith announced Wednesday that now-former jailer Dominique Rashawn Reeves had been arrested on charges including possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, possession of MDMA with the intent to distribute, items prohibited for possession by inmates and violation of oath by a public officer. Contessa Nicole Easley and Artira Deshay Harrison — the mother and girlfriend, respectively, of inmate Demarcus Norman — were arrested on similar charges.
Smith said the arrests stemmed from a three-week undercover investigation that began after "gang sign markings" were noticed on the jail uniform of Norman, one of several suspects charged in the Sept. 27 shooting that hurt nearly a dozen people at the nearby Hill Haven Event Center.
“During this follow-up investigation our primary case investigator intercepted numerous communications that indicated that contraband was being brought into the jail,” Smith said in an emailed statement. “Indications from the intercepted communications were that one of our jail personnel was involved in getting the contraband inside. We had to decipher coded communication to determine who was involved and how the transactions were taking place.”
The sheriff’s statement did not reveal exactly how those transactions took place. It did say, however, that Easley and Harrison brought the drugs from the LaGrange area and gave them to Reeves, who delivered them to inmates at the jail in Greenville, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta.
Easley, 35, and Harrison, 24, are being held at the Meriwether County jail. Reeves is being held without bond at “another undisclosed jail facility,” authorities said.
Search warrants to draw and test the blood of “inmates in our target cell block” were executed Wednesday, Smith said.
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