Three Lexington Park residents are being held without bond after a months-long narcotics investigation led detectives to a Sell Drive residence where they found packaged cocaine, suboxone, and cash, the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office said.
Detectives with the Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division served search and seizure warrants Wednesday at a home in the 46000 block of Sell Drive, where they say they found individually packaged quantities of suspected cocaine, a quantity of suboxone, and drug paraphernalia inside the house. A search of a 2006 Audi A4 parked outside turned up additional suspected cocaine packaged in a manner investigators described as indicative of distribution, along with more than $1,500 in cash.
Walead Othman, 59, and Mary Theresa Dickerson, 68, were each charged with possession with intent to distribute and two counts of possession of a controlled dangerous substance. Lorne Cardell Gross, 59, was charged with possession with intent to distribute and one count of possession of a controlled dangerous substance. All three are Lexington Park residents and are being held without bond at the Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Leonardtown; none has been convicted, and the charges represent allegations only.
The charges carry sharply different weight depending on which substance is involved. Cocaine is a Schedule II narcotic under Maryland law, and possession with intent to distribute it is a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison and a $25,000 fine for a first offense. Suboxone, which contains the opioid buprenorphine, is classified as a less-restricted Schedule III substance; simple possession is a misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail, while possession with intent to distribute it is a felony with a five-year maximum — a fraction of the exposure tied to the cocaine charges in this case.
State records show at least one of the three defendants has a prior brush with law enforcement: Maryland State Police records show Othman was arrested in April 2024 on a second-degree assault warrant. No independently verifiable pattern of prior narcotics activity at the Sell Drive address itself was found.
The investigation remains open. Anyone with information is asked to contact the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office at 301-475-8008.
