Drugs Missing From West Virginia Sheriff's Office

March 12, 2011
West Virginia State Police are investigating at the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, where a box of prescription drugs is missing.

MARSHALL COUNTY, W.VA. --

West Virginia State Police are investigating at the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, where a box of prescription drugs is missing.

Sheriff John Gruzinskas said the unused prescription drugs were inside Chief Deputy Kevin Cecil's office.

Cecil was out of the office at the time the drugs disappeared. He said it happened at the end of January, and the department has been working on an internal investigation since then.

The drugs are fentanyl patches, a pain killer intended for cancer patients. They were turned over to the Sheriff's Office, and deputies were going to turn them over to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

They've looked over surveillance footage to determine who was in the building during the roughly one-hour window during which the drugs went missing. County and city employees and vendors will take polygraph tests administered by the state police, which is the agency now working the investigation.

"We're going to leave it up to the State Police, and we're going to have them come in, and we're not going to impede them in any way. We want them to conduct the investigation. I don't care who it involves, we just want whoever is responsible caught," said Gruzinskas.

The sheriff has also made a change to building security, requiring that a deputy escort any vendors while they're in the building.

The sheriff instructed Cecil to put out a memo to county employees. It states that whoever took the drugs could return them, no questions asked, until a certain date. The sheriff said that was an investigative tool, and he has no intention of letting the person responsible off the hook.

Copyright 2011 by . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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