A Silver Springs woman found herself behind bars Wednesday night after a Marion County sheriff’s deputy stopped her for driving with a license tag that wasn’t assigned to her vehicle.
The deputy stopped 32-year-old Kayla Shade Awadallah in the 4800 block of NE 35th Street and smelled the odor of marijuana as he approached her vehicle. Awadallah said the vehicle belonged to a maintenance shop and she had recently picked it up to use while hers was being repaired, a sheriff’s office report states.
While speaking with Awadallah, the deputy noted that she had a black jacket with white stripes sitting in her lap. He conducted a records check that showed the vehicle wasn’t registered and when he made contact with her again, the jacket was on the driver’s side floorboard next to her feet, the report says.
The deputy asked Awadallah to step out of the vehicle so he could conduct a search due to the odor of marijuana. A short time later, he lifted up the jacket and discovered a loaded black Beretta .40-caliber pistol, the report says.
After being read her rights, Awadallah gave the deputy different stories on how she came into possession of the vehicle. She eventually said that her vehicle was having maintenance issues and she had met a man named “Johnathan” online who had agreed to help her repair it. She claimed to have no knowledge of the firearm on the driver’s side floorboard, though she admitted the jacket that was placed on top of it belonged to her, the report says.
Awadallah said that just prior to the deputy stopping her, she had met with “Johnathan” somewhere on 14th Street, where she had traded vehicles with him so he could make the needed repairs. She said she was communicating with him via an online messenger, but she had deleted the messages. And she admitted that she didn’t have a concealed weapons permit, the report says.
Awadallah, who lives in the 3400 block of NE 47th Terrace in Silver Springs, was then taken into custody and transported to the Marion County Jail, where she was charged with failure to register a motor vehicle and carrying a concealed firearm. She was released Thursday on $2,500 bond and her next court date hasn’t yet been set, jail records show.