Officer finds 35 grams of meth and more than $800 in cash during Isabella traffic stop

Sandra Coons, 65, and Larry Sanders, 71, both of Isabella, are being held in the Ozark County Jail on a $25,000 cash only bond in connection with a case where they are each charged with trafficking drugs and unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia. 

They were arrested May 4 and scheduled for a bond reduction hearing Tuesday. Results of those hearings were not available at presstime. 

According to the probable cause statement in the case, prepared by Ozark County Sheriff’s Deputy Josh Sherman, he stopped a white vehicle at Highways HH and 160 in Isabella around 11 p.m. May 3, after the driver failed to stop at a stop sign. 

Sanders was the driver and was on probation for significant prior drug charges, and Coons, who was riding as a passenger, currently has an open case regarding elder abuse. 

Because Sanders was on probation, Sherman asked consent to search the vehicle and was granted it. K9 Karo was deployed and displayed a “head hook” back to the vehicle, which provided probable cause to search. 

Sherman also searched a black purse that was left on the trunk of the vehicle by Coons. Inside he found Coon’s identification, $127 in cash, a glass smoking device that field-tested positive for meth and 35.5 grams of a white crystalline substance that also field-tested positive for meth. Sherman found $754 in cash on Sanders. 

“Larry and Sandra have continued to have constant and regular contact with other known drug users within Ozark County as well as others that are supervised by Probation and Parole. They show blatant disregard for monitoring guidelines by Probation and Parole, which appear to be very unclear to [them]... Both parties have a significant amount of methamphetamine within Ozark County that launch their incident well beyond a ‘simple possession’ case,” Sherman says in the statement.