Officers arrest 14 in drug house

By: ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

BIG HAUL: Trumbull County Sheriff Thomas Altiere stands near a table full of drugs, cash, a bulletproof vest and ammunition that were recovered from a house at 2026 W. Market St. in Warren during a raid Tuesday afternoon. Fourteen people were arrested at the house on drug charges, 11 of whom will be arraigned today in Warren Municipal Court. The lead investigative agency was the Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force, which is headed by Lt. Jeff Orr of the sheriff’s department.
 

WARREN — Eleven people will be arraigned today in Warren Municipal Court on various drug trafficking, possession and abuse charges after they were arrested Tuesday afternoon in a drug house on West Market Street.

Three females also will be processed in juvenile court on the charges.
 
Jeff Orr, a lieutenant with the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Department and commander of the Trumbull Ashtabula Group Law Enforcement Task Force, said TAG received assistance from the Mahoning Valley Crisis Response Team, which used the armored vehicle “Bear” to conduct the 1 p.m. raid near Nevada Street Northwest.

Inside, officers found 14 people, plus about about eight adult pit-bull dogs loose in the house and about eight pit-bull puppies in a cage.

Officers confiscated various drugs, including heroin with a street value of $17,000, crack cocaine valued at $6,000, cocaine valued at $6,000 Oxycontin worth $42,000, marijuana valued at $500, $10,000 in cash, 10 firearms and a military-issue bulletproof vest.

There were several alleged drug dealers among the individuals in the house, as well as several drug addicts.

Among those arrested were two people from Detroit who had brought the dogs with them, Orr said. The others were from the Warren area.

“This was a large distribution point with a lot of people coming and going all hours of the day,” Orr said. Six to seven cars pulled up to the house during the eight hours officers were there, even though a marked cruiser was in the driveway, Orr said.

Also assisting with the raid and traffic control were the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation and the Warren Police Department.

Orr said TAG, which normally works on drug and other cases in areas of the county outside the cities, came into Warren to conduct a month long investigation of the house because of information received that heroin users from outside the city were buying the product there.

The dogs, which were all unlicensed and aggressive, were euthanized at the Trumbull County Dog Pound, Orr said.

TAG learned from the manufacturer of the vest that it had come from the U.S. military. The U.S. General Services Administration is checking to determine specifically where the vest came from, Orr said.