Report: Man charged with trafficking drugs in former employer’s parking lot thirty minutes after being fired

ROWAN COUNTY, N.C. (WBTV) - Deputies with the Rowan Sheriff’s Office say they arrested a man for trafficking drugs in his former employer’s parking lot just thirty minutes after he had been fired.

Deputies were called to the parking lot of Love’s Travel Plaza off Peeler Road in Rowan County on Tuesday morning at 2:50 a.m. A person in the parking lot had called 911 to report two people sitting in a car. The caller said the two appeared to be doing drugs.

When deputies arrived they found Douglas Glenn Sharpe, 35, of Haw River, sitting in a vehicle with Elizabeth Husband, 31. Sharpe and Husband began “squirming” and moving around in the car in attempt to hide something, according to the report.

Deputies say the two were smoking marijuana in the car, and when asked how much marijuana they still had, Sharpe replied that they “had smoked it all.”

When he was searched, Sharpe was found to be holding a plastic bag. Deputies say it contained a white powder believed to be cocaine.

Husband was tightly holding her phone, deputies say. When they took the phone, inside the case they found a cut straw and a baggie containing approximately one gram of crystal methamphetamine.

When deputies began to search a 2022 Chevrolet Malibu parked next to the car in which Sharpe and Husband had been sitting, they say Sharpe screamed that the Malibu was not his and that there was no reason to search it. Investigators say Sharpe had the keys to the Chevrolet.

Halo, a Rowan Sheriff’s Office K-9, alerted to the presence of drugs in the car, according to deputies. Inside the Malibu they say they found a large bag with 37 grams of oxycodone.

While the activity was taking place in the parking lot, deputies say they were approached by employees of the travel plaza who told them that Sharpe had been fired about thirty minutes earlier.

Sharpe was charged with trafficking cocaine, trafficking heroin, maintaining a vehicle for the illegal drug trade, and possession of drug paraphernalia. Bond was set at $120,000.

Husband was charged with drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. Bond was set at $5000.

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