A judge ordered then canceled the arrest of a Tampa resident who police said they caught with 28 pounds of crystal meth during a traffic stop on Interstate 75 and who missed his arraignment Thursday on felony drug charges.
Cedric Jabbar Lamb, 47, said in a phone interview he didn’t remember his scheduled arraignment in Alachua County Circuit Court. When a reporter asked why he missed his court hearing, he dropped a string of expletives and blamed a mixup on the company that had helped post his $105,000 bail last month.
“I just talked to my bondsman yesterday,” Lamb said, letting loose a string of expletives. “I didn’t know. Wow.”
Circuit Judge James Colaw issued a warrant for Lamb’s re-arrest shortly after 10:30 a.m. when officers called his case, and Lamb was nowhere to be found. By evening, the judge had canceled the new arrest warrant and accepted a written plea of not guilty in the case.
Lamb’s bail bonds company, Andrae Bryant Bail Bonds LLC, said an employee contacted the judge to explain there had been a mixup in court dates. The schedule for Thursday’s hearing was posted to the court docket in this case on Aug. 27, the same day the State Attorney’s Office formally charged him with felony trafficking in methamphetamine and a misdemeanor, resisting arrest without violence.
The felony carries a minimum of 15 years in prison if Lamb were convicted.
Gainesville police said they pulled over Lamb on I-75 in August because they said he was following another driver too closely and was weaving out of his lane. His girlfriend’s three teenagers – ages 13, 14 and 16 – were in the Ford Expedition SUV.
An officer said he smelled marijuana, so he searched the SUV while Lamb sat in the backseat of his cruiser and the teens waited in a nearby parking lot. When an officer started to search the rear area of the SUV, police said Lamb jumped out of the cruiser and tried to flee.
Two officers struggled to handcuff Lamb and used pepper spray to subdue him, police said. One officer dropped her Taser stun device in the scuffle, which police said Lamb grabbed until the other officer wrestled it away. Police handcuffed him and put him back in the cruiser.
Inside the SUV, they found a black suitcase with four sealed bags of crystal meth – weighing just over 28 pounds. Police estimated the street value of the drugs at more than $50,000. A typical dose is one to several grams. Police said they found 12,722 grams in Lamb’s SUV.
Police are still investigating where Lamb was taking the drugs and who provided it to him.
Lamb’s next court hearing is Oct. 17.
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