Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

The U.S Postal Inspection Service, the Alaska State Troopers drug unit Southeast Alaska Cities Against Drugs (SEACAD) and Haines Police arrested a 43-year-old man on Tuesday for two felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance in the second and third degree.

Troopers charged the Haines resident with the intent to distribute heroin and methamphetamine, according to court records. The arrest comes after a postal inspector on July 9 noticed a suspicious package addressed to the man from a former resident in Phoenix, Arizona. Postal inspectors learned the man received and accepted a similar package several days prior. On July 21, the postal service found a third suspicious package addressed from Phoenix to the Haines resident.

The postal service obtained a search warrant to examine the third package and discovered “a soda can that had been altered to contain a hollow area where approximately 10.8 grams of a dark tar-like substance that field tested positive for heroin” and 28.5 grams of methamphetamine, according to court records.

Waiting at the Haines post office, SEACAD officers observed the man pick up the package and take it home. Officers searched his residence where they found “scales, approximately 1,000 new, unused ‘dime bags,’ ledgers documenting debits and credits, and handwritten notes regarding quantities of controlled substances and prices.”

Officers also found other previously unidentified mail parcels and an additional soda can hollowed out in the same manner as the one he picked up Tuesday.

“During an interview, (the man) acknowledged receiving parcels that contained controlled substances and sending money south as payment for the substances,” court records state.

The man appeared in court Wednesday. Sgt. Josh Dryden told the district attorney he did not consider the man, a lifelong Haines resident, to be a flight risk. The judge released him on an unsecured $15,000 performance bond and ordered not to travel outside the Haines Borough among other conditions of release. He has a preliminary hearing scheduled for Aug. 10.