LAFOLLETTE, TN (WLAF) – LaFollette Police Officer Anthony Mahar was recently approached by a woman in a black vehicle. The woman alleged that a man on a bicycle had come up to her children while she was a store in the old Woodson’s Shopping Center and asked the kids if they wanted to buy any weed or ice. The mother was able to point out the male who was across the four lane.

Officer Mahar made contact with the man at 1214 Jacksboro Pike, LaFollette, around 5:30pm on Fri., Sep. 15. When Mahar got out of his patrol car and asked the male to walk to the front of his patrol car. The man began getting agitated and kept saying “he hadn’t done anything wrong.” The officer told the man, who was identified as Kenny Lee McCoy, that he was talking to him because a female had reported that he had tried to sell her kids drugs.

As Officer Mahar was walking McCoy to the front of his patrol car to Terry frisk* him, he started telling the officer that he couldn’t touch him. While patting him down, the officer felt something in McCoy’s pocket that felt like a pocketknife. When he was asked what it was, McCoy pulled it out and told him that it was a pipe he used to smoke Marijuana. Mahar continued the search and felt the same item in his pocket again, and he asked what it was. McCoy put his hand in his pocket and was moving it around, according to a report from the LaFollette Police Department.  McCoy was told to remove his hand and did so in a fast movement turning away from Mahar and throwing a glass Meth pipe on the pavement causing it to break.

Officer Mahar took control of McCoy to get him back in front of the cruiser, and McCoy allegedly pulled away and made the movement of trying to run away. The police officer was forced to take McCoy to the ground. While on the ground trying to place McCoy in handcuffs, McCoy continued to resist and fight to keep from being handcuffed. Officer Dillon Marney was also on scene and attempted to help get McCoy into handcuffs, but he had to use his OC spray, a type of pepper spray, to handcuff McCoy. McCoy was placed under arrest and transported to the Campbell County Jail.

McCoy, 46, was charged with possession of schedule VI controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, tampering with or fabricating evidence and resist stop frisk halt arrest or search. The home address McCoy gave to police is 331 Wiley Avenue, Lancaster, Ohio.

*A Terry frisk is a pat-down search of a person’s outer clothing. The officer can only pat down the outer clothing and cannot reach under the clothing or in the pockets unless they plainly feel contraband. The search is limited to what is necessary to discover weapons. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED – 10/02/2023-6AM)

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