Two other suspects swept up in a $125,000 Sarnia police drug raid that landed a Sarnia woman a 7.5-year prison sentence have been cleared.
Multiple Sarnia police squads, including the vice unit, found nearly 600 grams of crystal meth and 185 grams of fentanyl worth just shy of $97,000, along with about $28,000 in cash, while searching homes on Collingwood Street, Indian Road South and Hampton Avenue on Aug. 5, 2021.
Michelle Poirier, 33, Danielle Cumming, 30, both from Sarnia, and Keyshaun Jordan, 22, of no fixed address were all arrested and charged with multiple counts of drug trafficking, police said at the time.
Poirier, a 34-year-old woman with ties to Sarnia and Petrolia, pleaded guilty on Feb. 28 to possession of meth and possession of fentanyl, both for the purpose of trafficking. Following multiple adjournments, she was finally sentenced on May 18 to seven-and-a-half years in prison.
Cumming and Jordan were both facing the same two charges Poirier pleaded guilty to, along with an additional charge of possession of cocaine. But with Poirier pleading guilty and now sentenced, assistant federal prosecutor Brian Higgins asked justice of the peace Helen Gale to drop those charges. They were officially withdrawn on May 25.
While sentencing Poirier, a Sarnia judge said the drug she was caught selling – fentanyl – has altered the landscape of Canada’s substance-abuse crisis.
“And sadly, applying this to our context in Sarnia, we are a full-blown example of this reality and this crisis,” Justice Deborah Austin said at the time. “The examples occur every day in our community, in our courts and in our hospitals, affecting the health-care system, affecting our community at every level.
“The crime for which Ms. Poirier is being sentenced is extremely serious.”