June 08--DECATUR -- A 24-year-old Decatur man remained in Macon County Jail on Thursday after police discovered he'd hidden a stash of cocaine in his buttocks.
The incident took place June 7, 2011, but the man was arrested Wednesday at the Macon County Courts Facility. Macon County Sheriff Thomas Schneider said he was likely classified as a wanted person in connection with the incident when he happened to appear at the courts facility for another reason Wednesday.
"In cases like this, they may be waiting for lab results before they make an arrest," he said.
The incident began in a gas station parking lot in the 600 block of West Eldorado Street, where two Decatur Police Department detectives stopped a vehicle that had failed to signal at an intersection. They saw the man, who was the front-seat passenger, immediately begin leaning to the left and reaching near the back of his pants.
A K-9 unit arrived and indicated the odor of illegal narcotics was coming from the vehicle. Authorities found cannabis between the front driver and passenger seats, as well as a box of plastic sandwich bags such as the kind used to package drugs for street sales.
When police began to search the male passenger, he became confrontational. Officers noticed that the man's body was very rigid and he was "clenching his buttocks together" during the search.
Police took the man to their headquarters and told him they would obtain a search warrant for his person. He replied that was not necessary and turned over two clear bags of suspected cocaine, weighing about 5.2 grams, which were concealed in his buttocks.
The man faces preliminary charges of possession of a controlled substance within 1,000 feet of a church because of his location during the incident. His bond was set at $40,000.
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