Pair charged in post office drug bust have court date Thursday

A pair of Thomasville men arrested after allegedly claiming marijuana mailed through the U.S. Postal Service to Cairo are scheduled to go before a Superior Court judge Thursday to see if they can get out on bond while their case processes through the court system.  
The men’s arrests are connected to three identically wrapped boxes at the Cairo Post Office that raised the suspicions of postal inspectors and a drug sniffing dog last week. Police say when Tamarcus Sharpe, 28, signed for them then ran when they tried to talk with him, it was confirmed that the boxes contained $90,000 worth of marijuana.
Postal inspectors contacted Cairo Police about their suspicions on Friday, May 30. The boxes were addressed to three Cairo residences located within a few blocks of one another, according to Lt. Dewayne Pearson, an investigator with CPD.
“The postman had delivered packages to these guys and they were always waiting outside in a vehicle to meet him when he drove up,” Pearson says.
The packages, sent from an Arizona address, were the same size and tightly wrapped with tape.
A drug sniffing canine with the Brooks County Sheriff’s Office was brought to Cairo and he alerted on the packages, verifying the inspector’s suspicions.
On Saturday, May 31, a man called the post office asking if the packages had arrived. “He seemed anxious to retrieve them,” Pearson says. “He left a phone number for the postal service to use to notify him when they arrived.”
Pearson said it was determined that the cell phone number belonged to a man in Thomas County, so the Thomas County/Thomasville Narcotics/Vice Division was contacted to join the investigation.
Shortly after postal employees contacted the suspect on Monday, June 2, Sharpe walked inside the Cairo Post Office and allegedly signed for three boxes at the customer service window. There were four officers waiting inside the facility and seven officers outside.
In the Post Office lobby, officers told Sharpe to stop, but instead he dropped the boxes and tried to run through the front door. He was apprehended before he could get out of the building, according to Pearson.
In the parking lot, officers found Eric Leroy McCoy sitting in the passenger seat of a rented 2013 Toyota Camry, which Sharpe had driven to the Post Office. McCoy was taken into custody without incident, Pearson says.
Officers searched the Camry and allegedly found inside the trunk, a loaded handgun and items commonly used in drug packaging including scales, plastic bags, a utility knife and book bag with apparent marijuana resident inside.
Each box was a U.S. Postal Service box that contained 10 pounds of compressed marijuana divided into eight “bricks” of the illegal drug wrapped in plastic with a bright pink letter A written on the outside. Officers say the letter A is probably significant, serving as a Cartel sign or area where the marijuana originated.
Pearson says the drug likely would have been distributed throughout several nearby counties, including Grady.
Both Sharpe and McCoy are charged with trafficking in marijuana, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
They are being held in the Grady Detention Center and are awaiting their hearing before a Superior Court judge Thursday to determine if they will be released on bond.
Pearson said the investigation is continuing and it is unknown whether more arrests will follow.