A suspicious trio with a gun and drugs was arrested early Tuesday morning at Wal-Mart at Buffalo Ridge Plaza.
A Sumter County sheriff’s deputy was checking local businesses at 2:40 a.m. when he spotted a man walking between bushes at McDonald’s. The man, identified as 32-year-old Lonnie James Childers, told the deputy he and his companions had been asked to leave Wal-Mart due to their suspicious behavior.
A K-9 alerted on a vehicle in the Wal-Mart parking lot in which Childers’ girlfriend, 22-year-old Mandi Tyler Madison, and 31-year-old Emily Ruth Berroyer, had been sitting. A search of the vehicle turned up heroin, methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia and an Armory XDM 9mm firearm which was reported stolen in Marion County.
The trio was arrested and booked at the Sumter County Detention Center.
