Two Ketchikan residents face felony drug charges for allegedly dealing methamphetamine.
Ketchikan Police Sgt. Andy Berntson said the defendants have been the subject of investigation for a while.
According to the complaint filed in court, police served a search warrant Friday at a hotel room that had been rented by Laurie Ann Sivertsen and Samuel Lebron.
An earlier search warrant had been served at their home late last year.
“We’ve investigated multiple different incidents with both these defendants at this point,” he said. “One was early December when we served a search warrant and developed evidence for the charges that we booked on Friday. We also had additional charges based on a follow-up search warrant for that case.”
The follow-up search warrant was for the hotel room.
In the complaint, Berntson said that when police arrived, they found a 1.1-gram bag of methamphetamine in plain view on top of the television set.
Police also found methamphetamine hidden in a lighter inside Sivertsen’s purse, as well as drug-sales paraphernalia.
During the December search, police allegedly found two bags of methamphetamine, weighing a combined 3.76 grams.
According to the complaint, officers also seized $700 cash and drug-sales paraphernalia during that search.
Berntson writes that both Sivertsen and Lebron had multiple text messages on their phones indicative of drug sales.
Berntson said it sometimes takes a while for evidence to come together.
“Each case is a little bit different,” he said. “Sometimes you’re waiting on lab results, sometimes you’re waiting on other information or other co-defendants, different things like that.”
In this case, he said, evidence from the December search came together in time for those charges to be filed at the same time as those from Friday’s hotel-room search.
Sivertsen and Lebron were each charged with second- and third-degree misconduct involving a controlled substance. They had their initial hearings Saturday.
They are scheduled to appear Friday in Ketchikan District Court.
