A woman has been charged with smuggling heroin into Florida’s Charlotte County Jail by hiding it in her vagina.
Katrina Montez Wade, 37, was arrested on May 20th when deputies raided a suspected drug den in Port Charlotte.
Wade and another woman went to jail on trafficking charges after detectives say they found 98 grams of crack, 30 grams of heroin and pot at the home.
The other suspect told deputies at the time of the arrest that Wade had 50-100 baggies of heroin stashed in her vagina, but when she arrived at the county jail, the corrections deputies performed only a strip search – finding nothing – and denied a request for a body cavity search, according to the arrest report.
Deputies then started to hear rumblings that Wade was trading the heroin in the jail to get commissary items.
The deals were conducted by passing notes, reading lips and hand signals, according to the arrest report.
One note read, “Bags are $5.00. I am nice, but also a business person,” according to deputies.
After interviewing several other inmates, corrections deputies confronted Wade on May 26th.
They told her they were prepared to use an ultrasound device to find anything she had hidden inside her body, according to the report.
Deputies say Wade gave in and removed one large plastic bag of heroin from her body. Inside the bag deputies found 12 smaller plastic bags of heroin.
In addition to the original drug charges, she’s now facing Narcotics Possession, Possession with Intent to Distribute and Smuggling Contraband into Prison.
She remains in the Charlotte County Jail.
The sheriff’s office wouldn’t answer questions about why a body cavity search was denied upon her entrance into the jail.