Joplin drug trafficking case headed for trial
Jan. 21—A 26-year-old Joplin man was ordered Thursday to stand trial on six felony counts related to a raid on his home conducted Dec. 21 by narcotics officers with the Ozarks Drug Enforcement Team.
Tucker L. Hall waived a preliminary hearing in Jasper County Circuit Court on counts of second-degree trafficking in drugs, delivery of a controlled substance possession of a controlled substance, first-degree burglary, tampering with an electronic monitoring device and escape. Associate Judge Joseph Hensley set Hall's initial appearance in a trial division for Feb. 28.
Enforcement team officers and Joplin police served a search warrant on Hall's residence at 919 S. St. Louis Ave. while he was on probation and wearing an electronic ankle monitor. He was found in an upstairs room of the house, where he purportedly acknowledged having bags of the opioid fentanyl.
Fourteen bags containing a total of 3.3 grams of fentanyl, 1.4 grams of methamphetamine and four plastic containers in which suspected psilocybin mushrooms were being grown were seized in the search of the residence, according to a probable-cause affidavit.
A second affidavit states that after Hall was arrested and was being escorted to a police vehicle, he slipped out of one of his handcuffs and broke away from an officer, fleeing along some railroad tracks to a house where he hid until the homeowner confronted him and he ran out and hid under a deck.
Officers, who found him there and arrested him a second time, recovered the ankle monitor he was supposed to be wearing in the backyard of a residence near the one where he tried to hide. The affidavit states that the monitor had been cut to remove it from his ankle.
