Sheriffs: 2 jailed for unrelated attempts to aid inmates in county jails
(WISH) — Two Indiana women are now jailed themselves after they committed unrelated crimes to try to assist inmates in separate county jails, authorities reported Wednesday.
In Columbus just after 3 a.m. Wednesday, a Bartholomew County sheriff’s deputy says a woman staggered into the jail’s secure parking lot to pay someone’s bond.
Stephanie Horn, 58, of Columbus, was arrested after she exited her vehicle in the parking lot while “displaying several indicators of intoxication,” the deputy said in a news release. “Toward the end of the discussion with deputies, Horn became verbally aggressive and attempted to walk away from the deputies. Horn was placed in handcuffs however she began to resist deputies, and at one point kicking a deputy in his leg.”
Horn was taken to Columbus Regional Hospital, where she also kicked a nurse, the release says. A search warrant was secured to test Horn’s blood. She was found to have a 0.165 blood-alcohol count. Indiana’s threshold for drunken driving is 0.08.
She was taken from the hospital to the Bartholomew County jail on preliminary charges of operating while intoxicated; reckless driving; resisting law enforcement; public intoxication; and two counts of battery on a law enforcement officer. No online court records were available Wednesday night for Horn.
The deputy did not reveal in the release whose bond Horn was trying to pay.
From Evansville, the Vanderburgh County sheriff reports an inmate’s girlfriend showed up earlier in December outside one of the jail’s double-fenced and walled recreation yards. Security cameras caught her throwing a lighter and a clear, plastic bag with a little more than a gram of methamphetamine into the yard, Sheriff Noah Robinson says.
Montana Lee Chandler, 27, of Evansville, on Wednesday night was in the county jail on a preliminary count of drug trafficking with an inmate. She’s scheduled to be formally charged Thursday morning, the sheriff says.
A news release from the sheriff did not say when Chandler’s attempt happened, but noted “Chandler’s boyfriend, Nathen Browning, was implicated in the plot to introduce narcotics into the jail. The pair coordinated the plan using the Jail phone and messaging platforms, which are monitored by Jail staff.”
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