good morning i'm chief deputy brian henderson um we also have our partners here from the various agencies that represent the volusia bureau investigation and this morning we're here to announce the arrest of 10 individuals who are responsible for a drug trafficking organization that is operating or was operating in the central florida area the volusia bureau of investigations mission is to identify disrupt or dismantle drug trafficking organizations that operate in our area responsibility and in this case they did just that christina guess we are alleging that she is the ringleader of what we term the guests organization and throughout her time operating this organization we believe that they trafficked up to 24 pounds of methamphetamine within a one-year period our vbi agents were successful in infiltrating this organization through surveillance and ultimately through electronic surveillance and identified nine other members to include her source of supply that are responsible for bringing methamphetamine into volusia county this is christina guess she's a former prison guard she worked for the state of florida for 12 years we investigated her a few years ago as well for trafficking meth in center to prison and we intend to send her back another individual that we had identified in this investigation is a female by the name of andrea dunmeyer in december of last year we went to her house where her infant child was found deceased we began an investigation into that matter and determined that that child died as a result of methamphetamine toxology we're not sure exactly how that occurred our homicide detectives are continuing that investigation and we're working with the state attorney's office to hold her accountable for that we don't believe it was an intentional act but likely through neglect so this this organization obviously has some violence tied into it and some of the children that were involved in some of these houses we've removed them with the help of dcf i do want to thank the ocala police department one of the pieces to this was when we followed christina guess to ocala we identified her source of supply mr rashad campbell when we left that area ocala pd helped us out and executed a search warrant at that location and they were able to recover a large amount of narcotics from that uh that location as well so i'd like to invite chief umber up here for a couple comments good morning i think as you just heard from chief henderson this is a an effort that involved many many police agencies and sheriff's departments and under the scope of ebi on behalf of the deland the city of deland and the deland police department i want to commend them for their hard work their efforts as you as you realize drug traffickers they don't follow stay in certain boundaries they cross counties they cross state lines and we see time and time again that these task force operations they really work local law enforcement county law enforcement state law enforcement and federal agents work together to dismantle these organizations and it really impacts the communities you know the city of deland there were many people that were arrested that were involved that live in the city of deland so we have people that participate on these task forces at the city of deland as does ormond beach police department i think new smyrna beach police department does as well and they partner and work every day with our sheriff's departments and state law enforcement and federal law enforcement to dismantle these organizations so this is just a fine example of teamwork and it really makes a difference in our communities the uh the attorney general's office the statewide prosecution is uh going to prosecute this case and that's that generally occurs when you have multi-jurisdictional issues where it doesn't happen just in the 7th circuit so just to hammer home the local impact here year to date we've had 174 overdose deaths in volusia county we've had 863 non-fatal overdoses so just to paint that picture as to what type of havoc this drug along with fentanyl and others are causing in our community i think you'd hear from any police chief in this county would tell you that our property crimes are generally driven by the drug trade so people who are out breaking into houses and cars most of the time they're doing so to support their habit i talked about the 24 pounds of meth that was that we believe this organization is responsible for distributing here in central florida think of it as that's 24 times two or three that 24 pounds when it gets to the street level is being diluted or cut multiple times over so that could be upwards of 80 to 100 pounds of drugs that are being distributed throughout our community so again i want to commend the volusia bureau investigation the federal government for partnering with us in this investigation i do believe this made a significant impact in our community and i'm proud of the work that they did and we'll take any questions what's the street value of the 24 pounds of mess that was distributed over the past year there well so just on the 24 pounds itself it's 50 or 60 000 but again when you start cutting that meth up multiple times over it could jump up to over 100 to 200 000 depending on how many times it's cut or stepped on before it gets to the street level brian can you talk a little bit about this queen pin as opposed to kingpin um so she had been a corrections officer somewhere in florida do you know where i don't know where she worked in the prison system she worked there for uh 12 years she was decertified in 2013 by the criminal justice standards training commission and we understand that it was as a result of perjury and an unprofessional relationship she got on our radar back in 2019 we did a case on her and sent her to prison for a couple years for distributing methamphetamine and i mean she's right back out doing it again correct you know it's sad you think about we know about the child who died as a result of of the meth but what we don't know about that's that's the the sad part you know this this drug is extremely addictive it ravages families it tears families apart children are ultimately the ones that suffer from this because they're going to go without while their parents are out trying to feed their drug habits so it's it's heartbreaking and can you talk a little bit more about the child again no one's been charged with homicide in relation to this child's death correct not yet uh we do and we do believe that she is the sole person responsible um through neglect yeah um so how that occurred you know we're not sure exactly how that it got into the baby system but you know ultimately that parent's responsible for the care of that child and that didn't occur in this situation so we're going to hold someone accountable for it we're working with the state attorney's office right now to come up with the appropriate charges december of this past year this past year and it wasn't the the it wasn't the corrections there was another female involved andrea dunmar when you mention that this drug is sometimes include violence in it do you besides the med system found in that child was that child a victim of violence not that not that we know of you know that house we'd been to before to talk about violence a year prior to that we were there trying to apprehend a robbery suspect who barricaded himself in the house and we had to use our swat team to to get him out of that that resonance and there were kids present when that happened so you know anytime you have drugs out there you have money involved there's violence you know whether it's reported or unreported firearms go hand in hand with drugs we see it every day when our deputies are out there and police officers are out there you know being proactive in the streets trying to get drugs and guns off the street drug dealers carry guns and they don't carry them for sure they carry them for a reason by dismantling this operation how significant i mean do you think it was the main meth operation in our area no no in fact um the sheriff and i just traveled to the southern border last month with some other sheriffs we had a firsthand account of what is uh going on or what's not going on on the southern border and the amount of drugs that are being seized coming across that border particularly meth and fentanyl is is absolutely just it's it's insane to see so we know that there are many other organizations just like this and or larger we know a lot of who they are and the men and women who combined together like chief umber said in our task force as a team this is their mission this is their passion they love doing this type of work and i assure you that if you're out there trafficking drugs in our communities it's only a matter of time before we're kicking in your front door and you're going to jail you see when you say drugs or outside of florida are we talking about how old south florida are there specific countries all over central florida meth has no no home base this is you know the meth that we seized in this this operation this is all attributed to coming from the southern border coming from mexico this is pure methamphetamine we go back in time to the mid 2000s where you know a lot of you were here when we were dealing with the guys and girls that were making meth in their bathrooms we don't see that anymore just to drive that home and the reason behind that is is that the methods coming from mexico is so pure and it's so cheap that there's no reason to take that risk to make methamphetamine in your bathroom or in your home and and you know put yourself in that danger and on top of it it's poor quality it's hard to redistribute and make a profit off it so the amount of meth that we see coming from mexico it's flooding our communities and again we're going to be out there every day every night identifying those who think that it's a good idea to sell this poison to ruin families and we're going to hold them accountable and was it was the female suspect the queen king of all of us she was her distributor was allegedly in ocala yes or her supplier her source of supply he was based in ocala we had a great working relationship we identified him pretty early on in our investigation and the the strike force over in that area was more than willing to help us out and he's been arrested he has and he will be also prosecuted by the statewide prosecutor could you talk a little bit about the fbi's involvement in the operation absolutely so the fbi is part of our haida initiative which is the high intensity drug trafficking area they've been a great partner with us for many years they supply resources and intelligence to our investigations as we do for some of their investigations and it's truly just a good team environment with them put a little better perspective on this you mentioned 100 pounds when this is all cut and distributed but if i'm a buyer what what how much am i buying and what am i paying so you're seeing people at the street level buy you know a gram or less of meth and that could be anywhere from you know 30 to 60 depending on what that person believes the the quality of that meth is um you know again this is the upper level part of this organization so they're dealing in wholesale there's multiple layers beneath them that they too want to turn a profit so they're going to have to cut dilute that drug in order to make the money make it worthwhile for them as well did she say anything when she was arrested was she cooperating um i don't know the answer to that and quite honestly even if she does cooperate i don't really care um whatever information she has she belongs back in in prison you know she like she worked at the prison she wants to go back we're going to send her back was she on probation i could be another person you guys said you sent her christian 2019 and now she's really good so she information is that how you guys kept tabs on there um i i don't know i can tell you that's not how we we uh we got back onto her as far as being a a distributor we have people that tell us things our detectives are very good at what they do she got back on our radar and that was a that was a bad move on her part as far as her being on probation i'm not sure if she just did straight prison time or if she had any probation the bulk of the ring was operating in the land right but there were some people outside there they were um but their stretch in terms of where they were selling to you i mean you have a whole another layer of this and let me add that we we intend to arrest more people there are other people out there when you see this when you're watching the news tonight and you see some of your friends that are being pictured on here there's a great chance we're going to be coming to knock on your door to find out where you want to be in this because this isn't over we expect to arrest more people and some of those people we know were not in just volusia county all over the county on the east side of the county as well but in other counties around us on the question about what's the impact of it think about 24 pounds how many hundreds of thousands of grams are in a 24 pounds so you're talking thousands of people yeah i mean i think conservatively that could have you know that this was intercepted and you're you know we were able to stop thousands of people being able to purchase this in those very small quantities because it's such a potent drug and as uh chief said we've we've lost 173 people 174 174 people and how many overdoses our officers and deputy the deputies are responding all the time to these overdoses we're narcanning people and it's a direct result of this fentanyl and methamphetamine that we're seeing out there yeah we have in fact um we've we've now seen where pills that are purported to be something else in fact test positive for fentanyl we've seen pills that are supposed to be something else test positive for meth we've seized marijuana that has had fentanyl laced in it we've seized marijuana that's had meth lace in it and in our area the two biggest threats fentanyl being the number one threat with meth following closely behind it the amount of seizures that we've had just in our the sheriff's office over the past couple of years have tripled with meth and that's just street level deputies doing car stops seizing meth large quantities of meth out of out of vehicles again it just speaks to the amount of meth that is coming into our country and coming into our community and it's not just in volusia county it's all around us flagler seminole orange polk all over the place everyone is having the same issues that we're seeing and again if you're dealing this stuff it's only a matter of time anybody else okay thank you