Inmates used grandmother’s coffin to smuggle marijuana, police say

Sheriff’s deputies in Georgia say they foiled a bizarre smuggling scheme in which two jailed inmates used their dead grandmother’s casket to help them smuggle drugs and other contraband back into the jail.

Jailers escorted Henry Ison Rouse, 27, and Nekoase Antwan Vinson, 30, in handcuffs and leg restraints to the Bentley Brothers funeral home Thursday evening to bid farewell to their grandmother.

Emma Mae Faulk of Macon died last Sunday at age 74 and the prisoners were allowed a private viewing.

“One of them stayed in there (with the casket) a good amount of time,” the Rev. Roland Stroud told the Macon Telegraph.

Back at the jail, when guards searched Vinson they found a baggie of marijuana, a packet of tobacco, a lighter and cellphone crammed in a rag tucked in his groin.

Sheriff David Davis believes Vinson and Rouse had acquaintances leave the weed and other items in their grandmother’s casket for them to find.

“We see ingenious ways for the inmates to bring in contraband,” Davis told the newspaper. “But this is a new one on us.”

The two were charged with marijuana possession and trying to take contraband into jail.

“This incident illustrates the audacity of this generation of jail inmates,” Davis said in a statement. “To use the body of a deceased grandmother to hide drugs and other contraband is wicked.”

Vinson was behind bars on an undisclosed FBI matter. Rouse was locked up in July on drug and other charges.