GREENE COUNTY
A man driving eastbound on I-20 wound up in the Greene County jail on Aug. 5, after a concerned citizen phoned in a report of a vehicle being driven recklessly on the interstate.
Damon Keon Foley, 47, of Grovetown now faces multiple charges, including trafficking cocaine.
According to reports, dispatch notified GCSO units and Deputy John Jackson took a position on the Highway 77 bridge over I-20 and waited for the reported yellow Dodge Charger to pass by. Jackson caught up to the Charger after it passed his vantage point and visually verified the reported tag number.
According to Jackson’s account, he followed the car for several miles while observing how it maneuvered. He later said the Charger weaved toward the center line a few times and he witnessed it following other vehicles too closely. Jackson turned on his blue lights as the Charger approached Exit 148, where it continued to travel all the way up the ramp, stopped at the stop sign, and then turned right onto Georgia Highway 22.
The suspect car continued until it reached Molly’s Food and Fuel at 113 Hilley Rd., in Crawfordville, where it came to a stop in the parking lot. According to the report, Jackson could smell marijuana coming from the car as he approached it. The driver seemed very nervous and told Jackson he had a little marijuana in his pocket. He also said his license was “not good” because of a traffic offense he had not dealt with.
The driver of the Charger told Jackson his name was “Keon Grant” and gave him a birthdate, but when dispatch ran that information, it came back as “driver not found.”
Taliaferro County Sheriff’s Office deputies then arrived to assist.
Once again, Jackson asked him what his date of birth was and received the same negative answer from dispatch when the information was relayed.
Due to the driver’s lack of clarity, the marijuana smell, and the marijuana the driver took out of his pocket, Jackson decided to conduct a probable cause search of the vehicle and placed Foley in handcuffs.
At this point, Jackson got a truthful answer to his question about Foley’s birth date and dispatch relayed that Foley was wanted on a warrant from Richmond County for smuggling cocaine and a warrant from the U.S. Marshall’s service for a probation violation. Foley was searched for weapons and placed in Jackson’s patrol car.
During Jackson’s search of the car, he found a small black bag on the right-front seat, “containing two sets of scales, a small sandwich bag containing what appeared to be a small amount of marijuana and a round, cookie-shaped piece of suspected crack cocaine wrapped in a paper towel.”
According to his report, Jackson found in the trunk, a green Crown Royal bag containing “a two-cup-capacity measuring cup with a small whisk inside it, both of which were covered with a white powdery residue.”
Additionally, Jackson found a plastic grocery bag “containing a brick of a white powdery substance suspected to be cocaine.”
Roper’s Collision was called to tow the Charger to the Greene County Sheriff’s office for storage, where it was placed inside the fenced impound lot behind the jail.
In addition to cocaine trafficking, Foley was charged with failure to maintain lane, driving while license suspended, following too closely, giving a false name or address to a law enforcement officer, and possession of a controlled substance.