Marquita Price
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday arrested the wife of a McMinn County sheriff’s deputy after a TBI investigation revealed that she was responsible for taking drugs from the safe of her husband’s police vehicle late last year.
Marquita Price, 29, of Niota, Tn. was indicted Tuesday by the McMinn County grand jury on one count of theft over $1,000, one count of possession of schedule 1 drug for resale and two counts of possession of a schedule 2 drug for resale.
On Dec. 5, 2012, the deputy discovered that the drugs he had stored in a safe in the trunk of his police vehicle had been tampered with and were missing. He reported the missing drugs to his supervisors at the sheriff’s office. The investigation determined that sometime between October and December, 2012, Ms. Price took 20 grams of cocaine, nine grams of methamphetamine and 10 grams of heroin from evidence bags. The drugs were stored in the vehicle to use as training tools for the sheriff’s office K-9 program.
The 10th Judicial District Attorney General and the McMinn County Sheriff requested a TBI investigation into the missing drugs in December.
Ms. Price was booked into the McMinn County Jail on $50,000 bond.