An Oxford man with an extensive criminal record was jailed Saturday night after a Sumter County sheriff’s sergeant spotted him driving with a suspended license.
The sergeant conducted a traffic stop on a black Dodge Charger on County Road 104 in Oxford after recognizing the driver as 30-year-old Jeremy Kent Hicks, who was known to have a suspended license for quite some time.
The sergeant placed Hicks in handcuffs and had him sit in his patrol vehicle. He observed him to have “constricted pupils and droopy eyelids” and “low, slow raspy speech.” And the sergeant noted in his report that Hicks was “on the nod” and falling asleep repeatedly, even while he was speaking with him.
The deputy believed Hicks was under the influence but elected not to conduct field sobriety exercises because of his extensive criminal history. He had a sheriff’s K-9 unit do an open-air sniff of the vehicle and the dog alerted to the odor of narcotics. The sergeant then found a tan backpack in the rear passenger seat area that contained several baggies consistent with the same of narcotics and a black scale that had a white crystalline substance on it that field tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine, a sheriff’s office report states.
The sergeant also found another tan backpack in the vehicle’s trunk that contained a ledger with names, addresses, phone numbers, weights, prices, money owed and requests for timed meetings. A booklet with Hicks’ name and phone number also was found, as was a 4 mg single-use of Narcan, “which also is consistent with the use of opioids,” the report says.
Another deputy said he had retraced the path Hicks had taken near the scene and discovered a package containing Suboxone and a small crystalline discolored substance that field tested positive for heroin, the report says.
Hicks was arrested and transported to the Sumter County Detention Center. On the way to the facility, he fell asleep in the back seat of the patrol vehicle and at one point the sergeant stopped to check on his well-being.
At the detention center, the sergeant conducted four field sobriety exercises. Hicks needed the instructions repeated and didn’t give verbal responses to questions. He failed all four tests and stated that “he was extremely tired and had very little sleep over the past few days,” the report says.
Hicks, who had the smell of marijuana on his breath, refused to give a urine sample and after being read his rights said he didn’t wish to answer any questions without the presence of a lawyer, the report says.
Hicks then refused to sign traffic citations for driving while license revoked (habitual offender) and driving under the influence. He was charged with possession of heroin with intent to sell, driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, two counts of driving while license suspended (habitual offender), possession of a new legend drug without a prescription, possession of drug equipment, two counts of resisting a law enforcement officer for refusing to sign or accept citations and possession of marijuana not more than 20 grams.
Hicks, who lives at 1115 NE 130th Ave. in Oxford and has been held in the detention center 10 times since September 2009 on a litany of charges, was being held on no bond on one of the resisting charges and $19,000 bond on the remaining charges.
Hicks was working as landscaper in June 2016 when he was arrested and jailed on $16,000 bond after he was found to be in possession of heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine. He told a Sumter County sheriff’s deputy that he had “a bad drug problem” and that the drugs were for his personal use.