Crime & Safety

Go Long to Get High? Drug-Stuffed Football Falls Short of Prison Yard

A football stuffed with heroin, marijuana, tobacco, cell phones and other contraband fell short, and the man who threw the incomplete pass now faces felony charges.

A Detroit man’s incomplete pass could land him in jail along with the inmates he tried to deliver heroin and marijuana to Sunday.

But the football stuffed with drugs, tobacco, cell phones and other contraband fell short of his target – a the G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility exercise yard in Jackson – and now Christen Deon Sterling-Moore, 32, faces felony charges, the Detroit Free Press reports.

A prison official in the parking lot of the facility saw the failed attempt and Sterling-Moore was immediately apprehended. He has been arraigned on charges related to the delivery of heroin and marijuana and smuggling cell phones to prisoners, Jackson County Prosecutor Jerry Jarzynka told the Free Press.

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Gun towers are no longer manned and regular perimeter patrols have been ended at state prisons in favor of improved lighting and video surveillance. But some corrections officers say those measures aren’t effective and it’s easy for people to throw contraband over prison fences.

A similar incident happened at a prison Ohio in 2012, when prison officials intercepted a former corrections officer’s attempt to throw a football filled with drugs into the NBC Sports,reports. Commander Lt. Ken Coontz said at the time that he was “surprised at the amount of contraband and drugs that can be put in a football.”

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