A Silver Springs couple was jailed recently after a Marion County sheriff’s deputy spotted them getting in and out of their vehicle in the parking lot of a closed Ocala drug store.
The deputy observed a green GMC Sierra pickup truck in the parking lot of the CVS located at 2449 E. Silver Springs Boulevard. He reported seeing a man and woman – 47-year-old Kelley Lynn Pate and 31-year-old Eric Lee Shifflett – getting in and out of the vehicle and decided to make contact with them.
A computer check showed that both Pate and Shifflett had active warrants for their arrests. Shifflett was detained without incident on a warrant for no valid driver’s license, while Pate was wanted out a warrant out of Columbia County for violating probation on a past charge of petit theft. She pulled away from deputies when they attempted to detain her and ran a short distance across the parking lot. Deputies caught up to her and she continued to actively resist arrest by pulling away until they secured her in handcuffs, a sheriff’s office report states.
Deputies searched the truck before it was towed and found a black purse in the back seat that contained several empty syringes and a spoon with a white piece of cotton on it that field-tested positive for heroin, the report says.
After being read her rights, Pate said the purse was hers but she denied knowledge of the drug paraphernalia. She was then placed under arrest and transported to the Marion County Jail, where she was charged with resisting an officer without violence and possession of drug paraphernalia. She was being held on $2,000 bond and is due in court June 15 at 9:30 a.m., jail records show.
Shifflett was charged with a custody order for a past charge of no valid driver’s license. He was released four days later with credit for time served, jail records show.