Three men were arrested on the Grambling State University campus last week after an officer arrested a man with suspected marijuana only to have it disappear before it could be secured.
At about 2:30 a.m. on October 10, a GSU officer responded to Wheatley Hall, a campus dormitory, after security guards told several men twice to leave a stairwell because they were not allowed to loiter in the area at that time of night. After repeated warnings from the guards, the three men, Xhane Williams, 19, of Monroe; Nicholas Hamilton, 18, of DeSoto, Texas; and Averill Ward, 19, of Monroe; refused to leave.
The officer located the men and saw a plastic bag of suspected marijuana hanging out of Williams’s pocket. Williams was asked what was in the pocket and he stated “candy.” He was placed under arrest and escorted to a police vehicle.
When the officer and Williams reached the vehicle, the bag of marijuana was no longer in Williams’s left pocket. A digital scale was found in Williams’s right pants pockets. Williams was placed in the police vehicle and the officer searched for the marijuana without finding it.
At GSU police headquarters, the officer viewed surveillance video and saw Ward had taken the suspected marijuana and passed it to Hamilton.
Ward and Hamilton were found in the Wheatley Hall area and detained. Ward said the bag had contained “candy.” Hamilton admitted receiving the bag from Ward and stated he placed the bag, which he admitted contained marijuana, inside his dorm room. The bag was allegedly discarded.
Williams told police he buys and smokes marijuana which was the reason he had the scale in his pocket, but denied he had any marijuana on him.
All three men were booked at the Lincoln Parish Detention Center for obstruction of justice. Bail for Ward and Williams was set at $15,000. Hamilton’s bail was set at $25,000.
This information has been provided by a law enforcement agency as public information. Persons named or shown in photographs or video as suspects in a criminal investigation, or arrested and charged with a crime, have not been convicted of any criminal offense and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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