Curtis jailed after failing to show; issue stems from multiple drug busts

An Ash Grove man was arrested and booked into the Greene County Jail on Thursday, Feb. 13 after he failed to appear in court in January. Michael Curtis was scheduled to appear at the Greene County Circuit Court on Wednesday, Jan. 15, where he is charged with one count of stealing and two counts of possession of a controlled substance. A warrant was issued for his arrest when he failed to appear.
The charge of stealing arises from an incident which took place on Feb. 15, 2019. According to the probable cause statement in that case, Curtis was detained at a Wal-Mart location in Springfield after an asset protection associate reported seeing him conceal merchandise in the store. A police officer searched Curtis and found five items of unpaid merchandise on him, with a total value of $41.48. Curtis was then given a municipal citation for stealing and another for trespassing. According to the probable cause statement, Curtis also had six prior municipal citations for stealing; five of them in 2018.
The first charge of possession of a controlled substance stems from an incident which took place in December of 2017. According to the first probable cause statement in that case, Curtis was observed to be in the driver’s seat of a car parked after hours at a Wal-Mart location in Springfield, along with three other people.
The officer got Curtis’s consent to search him, and reported finding a small plastic baggie with a green, leafy substance in the front coin pocket of Curtis’s pants. The officer stated he believed the substance to be marijuana, and when he asked Curtis about it, Curtis claimed it was his girlfriend’s.
The officer also searched Curtis’s car and reported finding a blue zip-up bag on the floorboard near where Curtis sat. The officer stated he found a spoon, two unused syringes in the bag, as well as one with a brown substance in it that he believed to be heroin. After reading Curtis his Miranda rights, the officer asked him about the bag, which Curtis said was “Probably my drug kit.” The officer also reported Curtis said the brown substance in the used syringe was heroin and stated he’d been using heroin for nine months.
The second charge of possession of a controlled substance stems from an incident which took place in November of 2018. According to the probable cause statement in that case, Curtis was observed by two Springfield police officers at a location in Springfield. Knowing he had warrants out for his arrest, they approached Curtis and requested his consent to search him. Curtis consented to the search, and one of the officers found a baggie containing a white powdery substance. According to the probable cause statement, the substance was tested and determined to be fentanyl.
In addition to the stealing and possession charges, Curtis is also accused of violating the terms of his probation in an earlier case. According to online records, Curtis pleaded guilty to two counts of stealing and a count of trespass in regards to an incident which took place in Springfield in November of 2018. He was given a suspended execution of a 90-day sentence for the trespass charge, and two years of unsupervised probation on all three charges.
As of press time, Curtis remained in the Greene County Jail.
 

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Lawrence County Record

312 S. Hickory St.
Mt. Vernon, MO, 65712
www.lawrencecountyrecord.com

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