Leesburg police dog helps arrest homeless man with drugs

A homeless man in Leesburg was arrested for drug possession when he admitted to having paraphernalia in his pocket and narcotics in his sock.

According to a police report from the Leesburg Police Department, an officer spotted a black Jeep Grand Cherokee with a broken left taillight in the outside lane of U.S. Highway 441 around 11:16 p.m. on Wednesday.

The officer then turned on his hazard lights and initiated a traffic stop. He approached from the passenger side and encountered the driver and passenger, 31-year-old Joseph Thomas Galazra. The officer identified himself and explained the reason for the stop, the report said.

Meanwhile, the officer requested assistance from a detection dog unit while he returned to his vehicle. Another officer arrived shortly after and spoke with the driver and Galazra while they were still seated. He asked if there was anything in the vehicle, to which Galazra admitted that he had a glass pipe in his left pants pocket. He placed the pipe on the dashboard for officers to see, the report said.

The officer understood and walked away from the vehicle. While another officer was on the driver's side, Galazra advised that he had something else on him. He pulled out a small plastic bag wrapped in aluminum foil that was crumpled into a ball and contained a white crystalline substance from the inside of one of his tennis shoes. He admitted that the substance he pulled out and the glass pipe also contained methamphetamine, the report said.

An officer later separated the spherical aluminum foil from the plastic bag surrounding it and placed it in a new clear bag. The bag weighed 1.0 grams. An on-site test showed the bag tested positive for methamphetamine, the report said.

Galazra was then arrested for possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia (possession or use). The Connecticut native was taken to the Lake County Jail and released on $3,500 bail.