4 face felony drug charges after agents find fentanyl during raid at New Kensington house

Four people arrested by a team of agents who raided a home in New Kensington in late December have been ordered to stand trial on drug charges.

Tammy Alane Hess, 53; Paul Scott Scratchard, 55; and Didiel Tirado, 57, all of the 2500 block of Seventh Street in New Kensington; and Lacy Lee Pearce, 33, of the 5100 block of Watters Road in Allegheny Township, were each charged with a felony count of possession of drugs with the intent to deliver along with seven related misdemeanor drug counts.

Pearce was charged with an additional count after, police said, drugs were found in her bra during a strip search. She was being detained in the Westmoreland County jail in lieu of a $25,000 cash bond.

Hess and Tirado were being detained on $50,000 cash bonds, according to court records. Scratchard was released from custody on a $25,000 unsecured bond.

Investigators wrote in a criminal complaint that agents from the state Attorney General’s Office and the Westmoreland County Drug Task Force joined officers from the New Kensington Police Department to execute a search warrant shortly before 9 a.m. on Dec. 29 at the home on Seventh Street.

After announcing their presence, officers broke through the front door and found the four suspects in the living room and took them into custody, the complaint said.

Officers searching the home found 36 bundles of fentanyl packaged in blue and green bags, seven bundles labeled “outbreak” and “bad yrng” and another bundle marked “track hawk,” the complaint said.

Heroin and fentanyl typically are packaged in small glassine packets, 10 to a bundle, according to authorities.

Police said they also found a .32-caliber revolver in the house along with Suboxone film strips, pressed fentanyl pills, a bottle of the prescription drug Gabapentin and 1.1 grams of crack cocaine.

Other evidence of drug dealing found in the house include a cellphone with the number used during the investigation, a pair of black “concealment” boxes, a digital scale, an “owe sheet” and $1,500 that included money police previously used to make an undercover drug buy as part of their investigation, the complaint said.

Before sending the seized drugs to a state police crime lab for analysis, some of the substance found in the stamp bags was field tested and came back positive for fentanyl, investigators said.

Police said 10 bundles of fentanyl — seven of which were labeled “demon” — were discovered in Pearce’s bra along with a number of fentanyl pills, Xanax tablets and Suboxone strips during a strip search at the New Kensington police station.