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Lee County man arrested on drug charges

• The owner of a Smithville- based lawn care business was arrested for selling crack cocaine, investigators say.

J.D. Sumner

LEESBURG — A man police believe is supplying crack and powder cocaine throughout Lee County was jailed late last week after deputies discovered drugs and cash, authorities say.

Russell Leon Jenkins, 36, was arrested in Smithville by Lee County Deputies on July 3. Jenkins was wanted on outstanding drug warrants, Sheriff Harold Breeden said.

He’s being charged with trafficking in cocaine and is being held in the Lee County Jail.

After arresting Jenkins on the outstanding warrant, deputies searched his home and his vehicle and discovered more than three ounces of crack cocaine and about $1,400 in cash, Breeden said.

In 1997, Jenkins spent three years in a state prison after Lee County authorities charged him with two counts of selling drugs and one count of possession with the intent to distribute, records show. Jenkins was out on bond and awaiting trial on an unrelated drug charge when he was arrested Thursday, Breeden said.

If convicted of both the pending drug charges, Breeden said that Jenkins will likely spend the rest of life behind jail under the “three-strikes” law.

As has become a custom of late, members of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency Task Force will likely take over the investigation and move the case through the federal court system where there is no parole.

Lee County investigators say they have been working for more than ten years to shut Jenkins’ operation down but have been thwarted by a tight- lipped Smithville community that is often hesitant to speak to law enforcement.

“There are a lot of good people in Smithville that wanted this guy off the streets, but there are also a lot of people who depended on this guy for their habit,” Breeden said. “So it ain’t easy sometimes to work an investigation over there.”

A member of Lee County’s Clandestine Narcotics Unit said that the town on the northern edge of the county is plagued with an active crack cocaine problem and drug dealers refuse to deal with people they don’t know.

“We’ve brought in people from Atlanta and all over to do buys there and they just won’t sell to them because they don’t know them,” Breeden said.

In addition to the cocaine, drug agents also seized pills believed to be the prescription painkiller oxycodone.

Jenkins was the owner of Jenkins Lawn Care service, authorities say.

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