GREENUP, Ky. (WSAZ) -- How do police stop, or at least slow down, the flow of illegal prescription drugs between Florida and the Tri-State?
A trial in eastern Kentucky reveals that it's all about arresting the drug runners, as well as the doctors responsible.
Greenup County Sheriff Keith Cooper said Nikki Blair and Tessa Potts, both from the Portsmouth, Ohio, area, sold him about $5,000 worth of OxyContin and Xanax pills in an undercover drug buy. Blair and Potts, however, were not the only two in the car.
Greenup County Sheriff's Deputy Jason Bryant testified that a 2-year-old child also was in the back seat -- Potts' grandson. With a toddler asleep in a car seat, a drug buy with at least one party armed could have easily turned violent, according to Cooper.
"If they started shooting, we could not return fire because of the child," he said.
Also seized from Blair were numerous boarding passes for local flights to and from Florida. Cooper said the drug trafficking suspect is one of hundreds still flying pills back from the Miami area
At the federal courthouse in Ashland, about a dozen local members of what police call an organized ring of drug smugglers are getting set for sentencing and most likely prison.
The admitted drug ring leader also awaiting federal sentencing is Roger Browne, a Florida physician.
To slow down the Florida drug running, keep busting the bevy of Florida pill-pushing doctors, according to Cooper. He hopes the two suspects will lead him to some bigger Florida drug connection dealers -- maybe even a doctor or two.