Florida Teacher Faces Felony Charges After Trying to Buy ‘Eight Ball’ of Meth at 1st Grade School
(The AEGIS Alliance) – JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA – A teacher at an elementary school in Florida faces felony drug charges for trying to purchase methamphetamine while she was teaching, police say according to CNN.
Valerie Lee Prince is a first-grade teacher in Jacksonville, Florida at the Jacksonville Heights Elementary School. She was in contact with an undercover police officer who works for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, CNN reported.
The CCSO released an audio recording and provided it to the media which reveal a woman having a conversation with an officer about wanting to buy an “eight ball” of meth for $85, which is one-eighth of an ounce of the drug.
The CCSO identified the woman as Prince, who can be heard telling the undercover cop if he can come to the school before children show up at 8:30 a.m. or while she’s on her lunch break at around 11 a.m.
“It was a pretty nonchalant request and the indication was it was no big deal to the suspect,” CNN quoted Clay County Seargant Vincent Hall saying.
“The teacher intended to leave the classroom of first graders to buy the narcotics, use some and save the rest for her boyfriend,” Clay County Lt. Domenic Paniccia said during a Friday press conference according to CNN.
Sgt. Hall said the CCSO arrested Prince after school was over, and charged her with possession of methamphetamine.
“In a case like this, for a teacher to be willing to leave the classroom, leave those children and to have the intent to go consume any degree of narcotics and then to return to the classroom setting where she has care of children is unacceptable,” CNN reported Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels saying.
Prince also admitted to authorities that she had used meth 10 times over the last five to six months.
As of Saturday, it is unclear if an attorney has been retained by Prince. Valerie Lee Prince is currently being held at the Clay County Jail, she is due to be arraigned in court on March 10.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
