Greenbank meth dealer found guilty

The Island County Prosecutor’s Office scored a victory in the local war on drugs last Thursday when after a little more than an hour, a jury found a 57-year-old man guilty of possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver.

Mark Crow was arrested in October after Island County Sheriff’s deputies recovered more than 19 grams of meth in a “ramshackle” motorhome in Greenbank, said Deputy Prosecutor Eric Ohme. The drugs were accompanied by a plethora of paraphernalia and more than $3,000 in cash.

“It was a one-stop shop for meth users,” Ohme said. “They had every type of implement you can imagine for ingesting meth.”

Crow and three other people had reportedly been squatting at an abandoned, burnt-out house in Greenbank while sleeping in a motorhome. Sheriff’s office Drug Detective Dan Todd said during his testimony that he’d rather “sleep under a tree” than spend any amount of time in Crow’s squalid living quarters.

“Deputies provided an informant with marked bills to purchase meth at the property,” Ohme said. “After the informant was successful, deputies secured a search warrant. The money was found on the premises during the search. Law enforcement did a tremendous job building a solid case against Mr. Crow and that helped convince the jury here.”

Friday’s verdict included a special sentence enhancement that will tack on 24 additional months to Crow’s sentence. Ohme determined that the defendant had been in possession of meth with the intent to sell it less than 1,000 feet from a school bus stop, which broke a very specific law. The jury agreed.

“It was 574-and-a-half feet from the bus stop at Bakken and Firehouse roads,” Ohme said.

Filled with challenging evidentiary issues, the deputy prosecutor called the trial “hard-fought.”

“The jury did an excellent job of sifting through the evidence,” Ohme said.

Under the standard sentencing range for Crow’s crime, he faces a minimum sentence of 84 months in prison, which includes the 24-month “school zone” enhancement, and a maximum of 144 months.

Crow’s arrest was the culmination of an extensive drug sting that also netted 64-year-old Edison Walters in Oak Harbor on the same night. Walters was sentenced Christmas Eve to 74 months in prison after pleading guilty to the same charge as Crow in addition to a charge of possession of a sawed-off firearm.

Crow’s sentencing has been set for Jan. 25.

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