A suspect accused of trafficking drugs crashed his truck while running away from deputies in Chester County, the sheriff’s office said on Thursday.
The Chester County Sheriff’s Office posted video of the incident after deputies tried to pull over Eric Bernard Jones near Columbia Road and the J.A. Cochran Bypass in Chester early Thursday morning.
The video shows Jones speaking with the deputies before pulling the truck door shut and driving away.
Deputies followed Jones until his pickup truck went off the side of the road and hit a drainage ditch. The truck popped up in the air after hitting a driveway entrance, and it nearly flipped, the video shows.
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No injuries were reported in the crash.
Chester County deputies took Jones into custody after the crash. He’s facing charges of trafficking fentanyl, trafficking methamphetamine, possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, failure to stop for blue lights, and driving under suspension.
Deadly drugs and a mandatory sentence
Authorities say they found more than 100 grams of what appeared to be fentanyl inside that truck.
“That could have killed twice the number of citizens in Chester County,” Sheriff Max Dorsey told Channel 9′s Tina Terry on Friday.
Samantha Jacobs knows that well. It’s the same drug that killed her 24-year-old son, Nick Revels, this past spring.
“To be honest with you, I feel like I’m dying on the inside because I miss my son so much,” Jacobs told Terry.
Last year parents with the group Fentanyl Kills You went to Columbia to push state lawmakers to pass new trafficking legislation. Their efforts led to a new law that created a mandatory minimum sentence for people who traffic Fentanyl.
Dorsey says his office has been able to use the new law in about 19 cases since it passed, including this case against Jones.
But Dorsey says more should be done at the federal level to keep drugs from crossing the Southwest border, which he says has become our backyard.
“We have thousands of people coming across that border weekly, and they are bringing in these drugs,” Dorsey said.
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According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, much of the fentanyl that crosses the southern border originally came from east Asia.
Dorsey, Jacobs and her family also want state lawmakers to pass a law that would allow fentanyl dealers to be charged in the deaths they cause.
“We have to hold these drug dealers accountable for the lives that are being lost,” Dorsey said.
“I don’t want to see anyone have to go through what we’re going through,” said Susan Clark, Revels’ grandmother. “This hurts.”
Before the law passed, Jones would have been facing five years in prison and if convicted he would only have to serve a third of the sentence. With the new law, he faces a mandatory 25 years in prison and could serve up to 40 years if convicted.
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