Fifth Savannah Jail Employee Arrested for Smuggling in Just Over a Year
A guard at Georgia’s Chatham County Detention Center (CCDC) in Savannah was arrested on March 5, 2024, after she admitted taking bribes to smuggle drugs to detainees. Sheriff John Wilcher said he then fired Megan Barbee for her “significant breach of conduct and trust.”
Wilcher must be getting used to such breaches; Barbee was one of five jail workers arrested for smuggling since January 2023, when former guard Georgette Bennett, 26, was caught trying to sneak fentanyl into work inside a Styrofoam cup, as PLN reported, [See: PLN, Mar. 2023, p.63.] Bennett even told a co-worker who trained her that she had resigned from her previous job with the state Department of Corrections after being accused of smuggling drugs into Rogers State Prison. Yet she remained at CCDC another five months until her arrest.
In February 2023, Quyen Nguyen, a nurse practitioner with jail healthcare contractor Correct Health, was arrested after a jail K-9 dog doing a routine sniff of the CCDC parking lot sat down beside Nguyen’s white Lexus SUV. A search of the vehicle then turned up prescription medication that had been pilfered from a former detainee.
In May 2023, Makayla Worlds, 22, an employee of jail commissary contractor Oasis, was fired and arrested for allegedly taking $1,500 in bribes to mule drug-soaked sheets of paper to an unnamed detainee from an unincarcerated co-conspirator, who was also not named. Sheriff Wilcher said that Worlds confessed after investigators confronted her with recorded phone conversations with the detainee.
The most recent smuggling arrest happened on March 11, 2024, when Indonesia Bell was fired by jail contractor Summit Food Service after a shakedown in the jail kitchen, during which she admitted taking bribes to smuggle contraband to detainees.
The September 2023 deaths of detainees Lloyd James and Marco Ochoa were attributed to overdoses from drugs, possibly fentanyl, possibly some smuggled by corrupt CCDC employees. Yet Wilcher continues to defend a 2021 move to digitize detainee mail, calling it necessary to stop fentanyl-laced letters sent to detainees.
Sources: Savannah Morning News, WJCL, WSAV, WSB, WTOC
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