Man, 46, charged in drug seizure
By Gary Popp
Published in News on December 2, 2011 1:46 PM
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Rodney Lee Woodard
A LaGrange man will face drug charges after being caught with nearly 300 grams of cocaine Wednesday.
Rodney Lee Woodard, 46, was charged with 26 counts of trafficking cocaine by the Goldsboro-Wayne County Drug Squad and placed in the Wayne County Jail under a $3,000,000 bond.
Goldsboro police Cpl. Dave Cloutier, who is also a Drug Enforcement Administration agent, said Woodard was pulled over by authorities near the intersection of U.S. 70 and N.C. 111 at approximately 11:50 a.m.
Minutes after Woodard was stopped, a search warrant was conducted at his home at 108 Brandy Ave.
More than 130 grams of the controlled substance were found in his vehicle, and nearly 160 grams were discovered during the search of his residence.
Cloutier said the combined estimated street value of the two seizures is $30,000.
He said the timing of the vehicle stop and the home search, which occurred almost simultaneously, had been engineered by multiple agencies.
Woodard's arrest was the latest advancement in a 10-month investigation that reaches throughout the eastern region of the state, but is centered in Wayne and Lenoir counties, Cloutier said.
"We are targeting a group of people for drug violations," he said. "They are all medium- to high-level drug traffickers."
Cloutier added that many of the those pursued during the investigation also have a history of violent behavior.
He said the investigation included the efforts of the Sheriff's Offices of Wayne and Lenoir counties, Goldsboro police, the Raleigh DEA office, the state's division of Alcohol Law Enforcement and the Wilmington office of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Cloutier said that Woodard's arrest does not bring an end to the multiple-county investigation.
"This type of investigation can take up to several years," he said.
Cloutier declined to say how Woodard was developed as a suspect, only that he was identified earlier this year as a high-level source for cocaine.