A lawyer for a woman charged with drug trafficking raised questions Thursday about the legal basis for a traffic stop that law enforcement investigator said led to the discovery of her 3-year-old child with a backpack of cocaine.
According to the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office, a “reliable source” tipped off law enforcement authorities that Tierra Tocorra Hill, 35, had a large amount of drugs in her home on Harvey Court near Hank Aaron Park and that deputies followed her before making a traffic stop on Crenshaw Street on Saturday.
John Brutkiewicz, who entered a not guilty plea on behalf of Hill on Thursday, told FOX10 News that it is early in the case and that he will know more after a preliminary hearing on May 20. But he said he has questions about whether officers had probable cause to pull his client over in the first place.
“It’s gonna be an issue,” he said. “It’s gonna be an issue as to why they would have stopped her as she was driving a vehicle in Midtown Mobile. … They had indicated to her that she had a tinted-window issue, and we dispute that. So we’ll see.”
