A drone bound for a prison dropped off a package containing contraband items at a nearby Virginia school by mistake.
According to the Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office, an employee at Brunswick Academy in Lawrenceville called to say that a suspicious package was found on the school campus. Deputies inferred that the drone was intended for a nearby prison.
When deputies arrived and opened ethe package, they discovered several pounds of marijuana and tobacco, as well as other contraband items such as three cellphones and a USB-C to lightning converter. The package weighed five pounds.
A witness told deputies that they saw a drone land on school grounds around 5:40 a.m., and later saw a dark colored sedan retrieve the drone.
“It’s like something you would see in Hollywood, like watching one of these sitcoms or one of these prison movies, and you see that and think ‘well, that’s not reality,” Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Roberts said.
Brunswick Academy is a “co-educational private school” that offers classes from preschool through high school in a “Christian environment,” and is located nearby the Lawrenceville Correctional Center.
The sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook that this wasn’t the first report of a drone delivering illicit packages.
“We have had numerous calls for service at the prison this year to include other drone sightings alleging the same criminal activity,” the post said.
A spokesman for the GEO group, the private company that runs the jail, said: “like many correctional facilities across the country Lawrenceville Correctional Center faces challenges related to the use of drones for the introduction of contraband in a correctional setting.”
An investigation regarding the incident is currently underway.
Lawrenceville is 70 miles outside of Richmond.