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WRTA bus pulled over during drug arrest

LIBERTY — A Warren woman pleaded not guilty at her arraignment Thursday after she was arrested on an active drug offense warrant by Liberty police on Belmont Avenue Wednesday morning.

Jessica Hughes, 35, was charged with drug paraphernalia.

According to the police report, an officer was patrolling the area of Belmont near McDonalds, where he observed Hughes — whom he was already familiar with — standing at the bus stop in front of the restaurant.

When providing Hughes’s information to dispatchers, he noticed her get onto a WRTA bus heading southbound on Belmont, where he discovered Hughes had an active warrant for her arrest through the township for possession of drugs.

The report states the officer caught up to the bus and pulled it over in the area of Belmont and Trumbull Avenue, where he boarded the bus and told Hughes to get up because she was under arrest.

After being placed in handcuffs, Hughes argued with the officer about not having a warrant, stating that her probation officer never mentioned it.

She said she didn’t possess anything illegal and that she was clean after a female officer searched her and she was placed into the patrol car’s backseat.

A Trumbull County corrections officer’s search of Hughes as she was being booked revealed a used crack pipe rolled up in tissue paper in her bra, however, and the drug paraphernalia charge was added.

Her bail was set at $7,500 for the possession of drugs charge and $1,500 for the drug paraphernalia charge. She’s set to appear in Girard Municipal Court for a pretrial hearing Jan. 23, court records show.

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