A man who was stopped by Eatonton police for running a red light ended up in jail for cocaine possession and other charges.
According to a report from the Eatonton Police Department, Officer Chad Burket pulled over a 2016 Chrysler 300 after it went through a red light at the intersection of Oak and Sumter streets around 3 a.m. Sunday, April 20.
When Burket walked up to the car, he reportedly noticed multiple open containers of alcoholic beverages in the front and back seats.
The driver told him he did not have a driver’s license, but he presented an identification card from Mexico that identified him as Ricardo Hernandez-Matio.
“I could smell a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on the driver’s breath as he spoke to me, and his eyes were bloodshot as well,” Burket wrote in his report. “There was a bit of a language barrier, but Ricardo admitted to drinking one beer.”
The open containers in the vehicle were cold to the touch, Burket reported.
“But no field sobriety was conducted due to the language barrier,” he said.
As Burket placed Hernandez-Matio in handcuffs to detain him, another officer, who was not identified in the report, found a clear plastic bag containing a white powder substance inside the center console of the Chrysler.
Officer Blaze Waldroup arrived on the scene and field tested the powder, which tested positive for cocaine.
“Ricardo admitted to the cocaine being his and using it,” Burket wrote in his report.
Ricardo Hernandez- Matias, 28, of Baynes Street, Eatonton, was booked into Putnam County jail on charges of driving without a valid license (misdemeanor), DUI combination drugs and alcohol, failure to obey a traffic control device, open container in a vehicle, and possession of cocaine.
The suspected cocaine was sent to the GBI lab for further testing.