Homeless man on drug probation arrested for tampering with evidence after saying he ate baggies of methamphetamine and fentanyl
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Mitchell Lee Jones, 33, who is currently on drug offender probation, was arrested yesterday and charged with methamphetamine and fentanyl possession, resisting arrest, and tampering with evidence after he reportedly told an officer he had eaten plastic baggies containing narcotics.
A Gainesville Police Department officer made contact with Jones Friday evening in response to a trespassing complaint; at the time, Jones was reportedly inside a tent within 50 feet of railroad tracks belonging to CSX.
The officer performed a routine check on Jones’ name and found that he had an outstanding warrant for arrest for violating probation from a previous narcotics conviction. Jones allegedly ran away from the officer through the woods, but fell to the ground; after a short struggle, the officer was able to place him in handcuffs. Right after he was placed in handcuffs, Jones reportedly said, “I ate all of the drugs.”
Another officer looked through a rip in the tent and saw a plastic bag containing a white substance, right next to where Jones had been sitting when the first officer approached. The bag reportedly contained 2.15 grams of methamphetamine, and a second bag contained 1.77 grams of a substance that appeared to be fentanyl but was not tested due to officer safety.
EMS responded to the scene, where Jones reportedly told them he needed to go to the hospital: “I ate all the bags, get the bags out of me.” He was admitted to the hospital and could not be booked into the jail until Saturday afternoon.
Jones was arrested in November 2022 for methamphetamine and fentanyl possession; the officer in that case noted that he had investigated several drug arrests and overdoses in the area, and each suspect had identified Jones as the person who had sold them methamphetamine and fentanyl. Jones entered a plea of nolo contendere to methamphetamine possession and was sentenced to 18 months of drug offender probation. His probation officer filed an affidavit on January 30, stating that he had not reported to the probation officer and had not established residence at GRACE Marketplace, the address he had given to law enforcement. A warrant was issued for his arrest.
Bail information is unavailable on weekends.
Articles about arrests are based on reports from law enforcement agencies. The charges listed are taken from the arrest report and/or court records and are only accusations. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Mitchy will eat it, he eats anything. Since he ingested it he should have been given the opportunity to digest it.
Just more of the same in Gainesville’s Disgrace Marketplace.
It was Mikey, not Mitchy….
It’s tragic how our police officers have to repeatedly deal with the same cases over and over.
We need to stop treating these criminals so nicely. After he admitted to eating the drugs and going into his version of the ‘I can’t Breathe’ speech, officers should have just shrugged their shoulders and said well that was a dumb thing to do. If you live you live and if you die you die, but you’re going straight to jail nonetheless. Instead we had to waste the services and times of EMTs, nurses, doctors and mental health counselors all before he even made it to his jail cell.
Why was he camping by the CSX train tracks when we spend all that money at Grace Marketplace trying to
Help the homeless? They need to round up all the homeless and process them at Grace so they get the help they need. This guy should have to wear and ankle bracelet and put on work release….if that don’t work, put him on a bus back to where he belongs. Every homeless person should have to report back to Grace by sundown.
If Grace don’t work, then it’s time to shut the Taj Mahal bum magnet down. It’s poor city leadership that we have been inundated with a “crime, violence, drugs, & panhandler vagrant crisis”…
I thought disgrace the awful place was a non profit organization? Guess not.
Can we not Baker Act anyone anymore? He needs help to make his self clean again. Drugs can make one mentally ill.
The bum needs to be in jail for 30 days… He won’t get any drugs in there and that will make him clean. Then bus ticket back to where he came from.
The Florida marchmans act is specifically an emergency intervention like a baker act but mainly focusing on substance abuse crisis with homicidal or suicidal thoughts or actions. I think
Well…..you know what they say…..you are what you eat. Looks like this guy is already half-in-the-bag to me so maybe he should modify his diet?
As long as judges keep letting these people go on “drug offender probation” these criminals will just keep doing what they do. If the prisons are “too full” build more, use some of our tax money that politicians waste on their own pet projects to keep these thugs in prison for as long as their sentence really is. Real prison sentences in real prisons, where prisoners have to work, not lay around and watch tv and lift weights, would soon cut down the crime rate. Right now there is no real deterrent to crime.
GRACE is flush with drugs of all kinds and is obviously not the place to send people in need of drug rehab. It’s like sending a sex addict to live in a house of prostitution. That’s just one of the reasons it should be scrapped or made into something completely different, like a rehab program with a definite timetable and lots of work, getting up early, and drug testing. Like a boot camp. That would turn away 95 percent of the current group. I’m sure they’d have to find new employees as well.
That’s an excellent idea….”a boot camp type rehab program with drug testing and a definite timetable”…