According to court documents, a deputy was parked in a median on I-70 watching the traffic flow.
He had seen hundreds of cars drive by — but one SUV stuck out to him because of the nervous behavior he noticed from the driver and the passenger.
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A court affidavit says the deputy pulled the SUV over for following too closely to a car in front of it. The deputy was going to let the two men off with a warning, but they were still showing suspicious behavior — even after the deputy told them they wouldn’t be getting a ticket.
The driver of the SUV was asked to go back towards sheriff’s cruisers with other deputies. When the passenger of the vehicle was asked to step out of the SUV — he took off running into a shallow ditch.
He was quickly caught by deputies, but what was allegedly found in his pants put him and the driver into hot water.
Lt. Kris Shultz with the sheriff’s office said deputies rounded up three kilograms of cocaine from the passenger — and that haul is worth a lot of money.
“Forty to 60 thousand dollars street value per kilogram,” Shultz said.
Shultz credited the deputy for trusting his instinct that something was off with the two men. He said they were both showing ‘criminal indicators’ that show deceptiveness.
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“Certain things that they are putting out that the deputy in his experience and training has learned to pick up on,” he said.
The driver was later identified as 63-year-old Nathaniel Burress and the passenger, as 42-year-old Earl Rivers — both out of Bellaire, Ohio. At the time of the incident, the two told deputies they were on their way from Dayton to Wheeling, West Virginia.
The two were charged in Clark County Municipal Court on Monday.
Burress — with complicity to trafficking in drugs, and Rivers — possession of drugs, trafficking in drugs and obstructing official business.
Judge Denise Moody set Rivers’ bond at $75,000 and Burress’ at $20,000.
Both were listed in the Clark County Jail as of Monday evening.
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