BLOOMFIELD –
Two Bloomfield men, one of whom is confined to a wheelchair, were arrested last week after police executed a search warrant on their Franklin St. apartment and confiscated 224 grams of methamphetamine with an estimated street value of $35,000, Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura reported.
Fontoura said the wheelchair-bound suspect, 54-year-old Gary Schuren, had been the target of a two-week investigation.
On the morning of March 17, Bloomfield police officers and detectives from the sheriff’s Bureau of Narcotics executed the warrant and made a forced entry into the apartment, where they found Schuren and his roommate, Marcus Irizarry, 32.
A patdown search of the suspects reportedly found Irizarry to be in possession of one gram of crystal meth and a glass pipe. The sheriff said $343 in cash was discovered in Schuren’s wheelchair.
Officers found an additional 223 grams of meth, a variety of drugprocessing and packaging materials and $2,350 in cash secreted in various locations throughout the apartment, Fontoura said.
Schuren and Irizarry were each charged with possession of a CDS, possession with intent to distribute, intent to distribute within 1,000 feet of Essex County Vocational School, possession of narcotics paraphernalia, and conspiracy.
The suspects were arraigned March 18 and were remanded to the county jail on a cash-only bond of $250,000 each.
– Karen Zautyk
