Post office sting yields arrest, pound of marijuana

Published 7:26 pm Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Greenville U.S. Postal Service officials received a rather special delivery Friday afternoon. So special, in fact, that their immediate inclination was to involve the Butler County Sheriff’s Office.

“On Friday, Jan. 5, we received a call from the postal inspector,” said Butler County sheriff Kenny Harden, “and he stated that they’d received a package that they believed had drugs in it.”

The sheriff’s office tasked a police dog with sniffing out the crime and, sure enough, the postal inspector’s hunch was confirmed.

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The Butler County Sheriff’s Office then got a search warrant for the package and put surveillance around the post office.

All that was left to do was lie in wait for the intended recipient.

Harden said the wait took approximately three hours, but the suspect–27-year-old Nicholas McHenry of Greenville, eventually arrived.

“When the person came to get the package, we waited until he came outside with the package and we took him down,” Harden said.

“Then we executed a search warrant on the package and found that it contained 1.3 pounds of marijuana.”

Because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, Harden declined to reveal too many details concerning the case, including the package’s place of origin.

But he commended several cooperating agencies in helping to keep Butler County’s streets drug-free, albeit in an unorthodox way, in Friday’s case.

“This was a joint operation,” Harden said. “The postal inspector was involved, as was the Second Judicial Taskforce and the Butler County Sheriff’s Office.

“Working with these other agencies kept 1.3 pounds of drugs off the streets here in  Butler County, and that’s what we try to do. When officers get the information, they run with it and try to make an arrest on it. They do an outstanding job on it. Here at the sheriff’s office, there is constantly a war against drugs; it’s something that has destroyed a lot of families. But we have cut down on drugs here in Butler County, and we’re going to continue to keep it off the streets.”

McHenry was charged with first-degree possession of marijuana and carrying a pistol without a permit.  He is currently being held at the Butler County Correctional Facility on a $10,000 bond.