Nervous bicyclist found to have narcotics in backpack

A Leesburg man was busted with drugs in his backpack when officers noticed he was nervous during a traffic stop on his bike.

An officer spotted 50-year-old Kenneth Cornell on a yellow electric bicycle near the intersection of East Meadow Street and Elk Street around 9:54 a.m. Thursday, according to an arrest report from the Leesburg Police Department. He passed through without yielding at the stop sign and did the same through the intersection of Elk Street and Cleveland Avenue. 

This led the officer to conduct a traffic stop on the bicycle at 100 Cleveland Street. He explained the reason for the stop while Cornell provided his name and date of birth. He also asked if Cornell had any narcotics in his possession, which he denied, the report said. 

However, Cornell became nervous with his hands visibly shaking after he was asked this question. Officers asked for consent to search, to which he agreed. This led to the discovery of aluminum foil and plastic straws with burnt narcotics residue used for smoking narcotics in his left jacket pocket, the report said. 

Cornell was subsequently detained and placed in the back of a patrol vehicle while officers moved on to searching his backpack. Inside, they located a small gray gun box containing two clear plastic bags with a crystal rock substance consistent with methamphetamine. The bags weighed 4 grams and 3.2 respectively and tested positive for such, the report said. 

Sitting in the bottom of the box was another small clear plastic bag with about 0.8 grams of a white powdery substance that also tested positive for methamphetamine. Additionally, officers found a glass pipe with black burnt narcotics residue used for smoking narcotics and a black scale with white powdery residue inside the backpack, the report said. 

Cornell later advised that he was a user of fentanyl and wanted to seek treatment for his addiction. He told officers that the total weight of narcotics he had in his backpack was about 10 grams in the three bags, although when officers weighed it, the total was about eight grams. He stated that he used the black scale that was recovered from the backpack to weigh the narcotics after buying them, the report said. 

The Pennsylvania native was charged with possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. He was transported to Lake County Jail with bond set at $3,500.