More than two years after Lambton OPP said they seized illegal drugs and a stolen lawn tractor worth about $57,000, a slew of charges laid against two suspects have been dropped.
Provincial police said they found the drugs and the tractor, stolen from Oxford County, on Jan. 28, 2021, after entering an address on Nauvoo Road in Brooke-Alvinston with a search warrant. It was alleged the drugs found included suspected methamphetamine, hydromorphone, cocaine and cannabis, police said. Police also released a photo of the seizure.
Georges Doucet, a 50-year-old Brooke-Alvinston resident, Angela Bain, 31, from Warwick Township and Tyler Grusie, 39, also from Warwick Township, were arrested and charged, police said.
About two years and three months later, Doucet and Bain were still facing two counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking, possession for the purpose of selling, and two counts of drug possession.
Until Friday.
“I’m asking that the charges be marked withdrawn at this time,” federal prosecutor Brian Higgins said to Superior Court Justice Russell Raikes in a Sarnia courtroom.
“All charges marked withdrawn,” Raikes said.
No reason was given by Higgins for why he wanted the charges to be dropped. Local criminal defense lawyers Joseph Stoesser and Luigi Perzia represented Bain and Doucet, respectively, during the brief appearance in Sarnia’s Superior Court of Justice assignment court, where most of the city’s ongoing cases were addressed.
Grusie was not listed on the docket. He died about four months after the charges were ugly, according to an online obituary.