Fugitive drug dealer nabbed in Alberta

A woman who blew off a sentencing date with a judge in Penticton more than three years ago was finally hauled into court in handcuffs this week.

Laurie-Ann Williams was convicted in February 2015 in B.C. Supreme Court of seven counts of possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking. She was due to be sentenced in May 2015, but was a no-show, prompting a warrant to be issued for her arrest.

Police finally caught up to her Sept. 6 in Edson, Alta., and she appeared in court in Penticton Tuesday.

Defence counsel James Pennington, who also represented Williams at trial, had the matter put over until Oct. 15.

“Obviously it’s going to take some time to organize the next step, whether that is bail or sentencing,” he said. She was on bail before, during and after her trial. The drugs with which Williams was caught included heroin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, LSD and prescription medications, and were found in a bag in the back of a truck when it was stopped by a Penticton RCMP officer acting on a tip in May 2012.

Williams claimed at trial she was living in the Shuswap when she travelled to Penticton for a dental procedure the day before she was arrested with the drugs, which Crown counsel Clarke Burnett described as a “virtual drug store of controlled substances.”

She was also among four people charged in 2006 in connection with what police at the time said was their biggest ever drug bust in the Oliver area, when a raid on three houses turned up 12 ounces of cocaine, marijuana, opium, handguns and $35,000 cash.

In relation to that event, she was sentenced in 2007 to two years, seven months in prison.