A Leesburg man will appear in court next week for allegedly selling a nicotine product to an underage informant during an investigation at Murphy USA.
Officers with the Leesburg Police Department Special Operations Unit conducted an operation at Murphy USA, 1801 Dr Martin Luther King Jr Blvd., on May 14 to see if a cashier would sell nicotine to an underage person, according to a case report from the LPD. That evening, a confidential informant under the age of 21 asked this cashier, 56-year-old Eugene William Fredrick Hougardy, for a four-pack of JUUL nicotine vape cartridges from behind the register.
Hougardy rang up the JUULs and did not request to see the CI’s identification. He instead asked in what year he was born before selling the cartridges to him. Two officers subsequently entered the store and informed Hougarty that he had just sold nicotine to an underage person, the report said.
The California native was issued a notice to appear with a mandatory court appearance on June 3.