The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office said on Wednesday that, during a traffic check, they found 940 grams of fentanyl, a Glock pistol, 20 grams of crystal meth, and an SKS rifle.
On Thursday, August 24, police arrested 25-year-old Katelin Lee Abernathy from Spartanburg, South Carolina.
The authorities allegedly seized 1,500 grams of fentanyl from the woman they had been watching for “drug-selling activities.”
Abernathy has been accused of possessing a weapon while committing a violent crime and being engaged in the trafficking of methamphetamine and fentanyl. She has been detained without bond since booking at the Spartanburg County Detention Center.
The CDC calls fentanyl a “major contributor to fatal and nonfatal overdoses” in the United States, making it one of the most dangerous opioids on the market today.
The sheriff’s office claims Abernathy was already under observation when she was stopped in the Boiling Springs area on Candlenut Lane. During the stop, a K-9 alerted the officers to illegal drugs.
The traffic stop led to the issuance of a search warrant for Abernathy’s storage facility. The SCSO reported finding three handguns and 4 “long guns” during their investigation of the residence, along with 531 grams of fentanyl.
Several law enforcement agencies collaborated to investigate Abernathy’s alleged “drug-selling activities,” including the Union County Sheriff’s Office, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, and the Spartanburg County Narcotics Unit.
According to the assessments of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the quantity of fentanyl allegedly found in Abernathy’s hands was sufficient to kill almost 736,000 people.
Two milligrams of the synthetic opioid fentanyl is enough to kill an adult, as stated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Fentanyl is about fifty times more powerful than heroin and one hundred times more potent than morphine.
More than 204 million fatal doses of fentanyl, calculated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), have been seized in 2023. This includes more than 46.4 million fentanyl pills and 6,900 pounds of fentanyl powder.
