Tacy

PHILIPPI – A Barbour County man is facing two felony charges after allegedly taking drugs from the body of an overdosed man.

Jeremy Wayne Tacy, 29, of Belington, is charged with child neglect creating risk of injury and conspiracy. He is being held in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail on an $80,000 cash bond.

According to the criminal complaint, prepared by Cpl. C. Parks of the Upshur County Sheriff’s Office, on March 23, a man was pronounced dead at Broaddus Hospital from a drug overdose. A woman also arrived at the hospital unconscious. Officers knew the two people had a child which was not present at the hospital, and went to their residence in Philippi to try to locate the child.

Upon arrival, Parks saw that the front door of the residence was “standing wide open,” the complaint states. Inside, he found “a hat and a butane torch” on “the living room floor.” He was unable to locate the child, but found a bag of “suspected methamphetamine weighing approximately 10.5 grams laying in the driveway.”

After obtaining a search warrant for the residence, Parks located “two bags of suspected marijuana, one glass smoking device used for ingesting methamphetamine, a substance on a glass dinner plate suspected to be methamphetamine located on the headboard where the child sleeps (and) one white powdery substance on a glass dinner plate suspected to be fentanyl located on the dining room table,” according to the complaint.

From hospital camera footage and witness interviews, officers learned that Tacy had driven the overdosed man and unconscious woman to the hospital, and had “taken the child to one of Jeremy’s relatives in Belington,” the complaint states. EMS brought the child to Broaddus Hospital for a checkup.

On March 27, officers spoke with a woman who said she was in the backseat holding the child while Tacy drove the couple to the hospital on March 23, according to the complaint. After Tacy pulled in at the hospital, camera footage shows Tacy “frantically rummaging through (the overdosed man’s) pockets of his pants and removing his boots as if he was looking for something,” the complaint states. The footage then shows Tacy “place the items he obtained … into the front passenger door of the vehicle.”

Witnesses reportedly said the overdosed man and unconscious woman, and friends, had smoked methamphetamine and snorted cocaine together the night of March 23.

Tacy allegedly told officers he had taken five or six bags of drugs from the overdosed man’s person and residence, the complaint states. He told police he burned and destroyed all of the bags except one, which he hid in the woods “so it couldn’t be located.” Tacy told police where the bag could be found, and an officer then recovered it at that location. The bag of controlled substances weighed approximately 5.12 grams.