A Greenfield man was sentenced to three years of community control on trafficking charges recently in Highland County Common Pleas Court.
Lamont Rickman, 48, was sentenced on one count of trafficking in cocaine, a fourth-degree felony.
Rickman was ordered to successfully complete Substance Use Disorder (SUD) treatment and aftercare. The court ordered that if Rickman violates any of the community control sanctions, he would be given a sentence of between six and 18 months and ordered to pay a fine of $5,000.
According to court documents, while a patrol officer was on duty on or around Oct. 10, 2023, they were contacted by a sergeant and told that a gold GMC truck had just left Rickman’s residence on Lyndon Avenue in Greenfield. The patrol officer saw Rickman operating the truck on Spring Street in Greenfield. Rickman parked the vehicle at a mini mart.
The patrol officer saw Rickman return to the vehicle and drive north on S.R. 41. The officer activated the patrol vehicle’s overhead lights and siren to start a traffic stop. The other vehicle stopped on S.R. 41 near Island Grove Road. The patrol officer made contact with Rickman and told him the reason for the stop. The patrol officer asked him to exit the vehicle.
As Rickman exited the vehicle, the patrol officer saw the “top part of a pill bottle” that was partially beneath a handkerchief on the driver’s seat. The officer told Rickman that he was being detained, then made contact with the vehicle’s passenger. After running that person’s license through dispatch and confirming that they weren’t a valid driver, the patrol officer asked the passenger to exit the vehicle.
The passenger stood with a new patrol officer on the scene, while two other officers started an inventory of the vehicle. The pill bottle on the driver’s seat was also found to contain a baggie with a green leafy substance and a second baggie that contained an unknown powder. The pill bottle had Rickman’s name on it.
The patrol officer advised Rickman of his Miranda Rights and questioned him about the pill bottle. Rickman first said that he knew about the weed inside the pill bottle but also claimed that he was “unaware of anything else.” Rickman then changed his story and claimed he didn’t know “anything” about the pill bottle either.
The patrol officer advised the passenger of their Miranda Rights and questioned them about the pill bottle and its contents. The passenger denied any knowledge of “any narcotics” inside the vehicle. The inventory of the vehicle was finished and the vehicle was towed. The powder substance found inside the baggie was field tested and came back positive for cocaine. Law enforcement then obtained a search warrant for Rickman’s Lyndon Avenue residence.
The officers went to the property to serve a search warrant. After arriving, officers were met at the front door by a relative of Rickman, who was taken into custody and secured in a police cruiser. There was another person in the upstairs bedroom who was also taken into custody.
In first floor bedroom, which the person at the front door said was Rickman’s bedroom, officers found loose powder on the nightstand lamp. On a nearby dresser, two cut straws with powder residue were found as well as credit/EBT cards with powder residue on them. A pill bottle with multiple different bags of pills was found inside a dresser drawer.
Two digital scales with powder residue, empty baggies, a glass container with residue, a baking soda box with cotton inside, a container with pills and a spoon with residue were found on the windowsill above the dresser. A plastic container with a green leafy substance, numerous Buprenorphine/Naloxone strips and a glass container with residue were located on a nightstand next to the bed, court records state.
A bag on the bed that contained multiple credit cards belonging to the person that answered the front door, along with that person’s driver’s license and Social Security card, was found to also contain a glass bottle with an unknown white substance, a glass bottle with several broken pills, a baggie with a green leafy substance, a glass pipe with burn marks and residue and a tube with a half-burned joint.
In the upstairs bedroom where the other person was found, officers found a straw with powder residue, two baggies with powder residue and a pill bottle that contained multiple pills. After the search was finished and the evidence secured, copies of the search warrant and inventory were left at the residence.
The two people found inside the property were transported to the Greenfield Police Department and placed in jail. The unknown substance found inside the person at the front door’s bag field tested positive for cocaine. The items seized during the traffic stop and the search warrant were submitted to BCI for analysis.
On Oct. 23, 2023, a patrol officer received a copy of a report on the person at the front door, the other person found at the house and Rickman. It was found that none of them had been prescribed Buprenorphine and Naloxone.
The plastic baggie that contained an unknown substance found on the driver’s seat of the truck inside a pill bottle was found to contain cocaine weighing of 7.17 grams. The item found inside the front door person’s purse was untested but also described by the chemist as a factory-sealed Buprenorphine and Naloxone. The glass bottle that contained an unknown white substance also found inside that person’s purse was found to contain Tramadol, Xylazine and fentanyl in an amount less than .10 grams.
The yellow tablet and “consistent fragments” located inside the purse were found to contain cocaine and Alprazolam in an amount less than 0.26 grams. The Buprenorphine/Naloxone strip from inside the truck Rickman was driving was also found to have contained Buprenorphine. The baggie with multiple sublingual films found in the nightstand of Rickman’s bedroom was also identified as Buprenorphine and Naloxone, according to court records.
Reach Jacob Clary at 937-402-2570.
