A South Jersey man who was picked up on a contempt of court warrant last Friday had an unexpected surprise for officers working at the Bridgeton Police Department. During his incarceration processing, 21-year-old Darquan Lee expressed an urgent need to use the bathroom facilities. However once officers informed Lee that the bathroom would be searched both before and after he used it, his urgency to poop suddenly vanished.
As Philly.com reports, that’s when officers became suspicious, and rightfully so.
“We thought he had drugs on him,” [Bridgeton Police Lt. Thomas] Speranza said. “We had no idea.” Wary of their suspect’s intentions, the Bridgeton officers radioed a warning ahead to the staff at the county jail.
Once Lee arrived there, the jail’s officers ordered a strip-search. During the search, they asked the disrobed Lee to squat, Speranza said. And then, from “between his butt cheeks,” Lee produced a tiny, palm-size semiautomatic handgun.
“We’ve had handguns hidden before,” Bridgeton Police Lt. Thomas Speranza told the Daily News, “but never anything quite like this.
I guess that’s the difference between New Jersey and Florida, where hiding in body cavities is a fairly regular occurrence. At any rate, unfortunately for Lee, the butt gun had also been reported stolen in Alabama, so he was then booked on charges of firearms violations and receiving stolen property in addition to the initial contempt of court charges. He is currently being held at the Cumberland County Jail without bail.