The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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September 11, 2008

Grady arrested again for alleged coke sale

By Dan Nienaber

NORTH MANKATO — A 21-year-old North Mankato man whose prison sentence was stayed in June after he pleaded guilty to a third-degree drug sales charge has been arrested again for allegedly selling cocaine.

Soloman Devorn Grady was arrested Sept. 5 after allegedly delivering about 3 grams of cocaine to a residence in the 200 block of Kingsway Drive in North Mankato. An informant working with the Minnesota River Valley Drug Task Force had met another man at that location. That man, who investigators say took $450 from the informant in exchange for four small bags of cocaine, had not been charged as of Wednesday afternoon.

According to the criminal complaint:

The informant had arranged to buy about a quarter ounce, or about 7 grams, of cocaine from Grady. After going to the Kingsway residence, he gave a man there the money. That man made a call, met someone in a van outside and then brought the cocaine to the informant inside the residence.

The informant gave cocaine to the people inside the residence before leaving. Investigators doing surveillance followed the van to Highway 14 and through lower North Mankato before stopping it near the North Mankato Police Department.

Grady was the only person inside the van. He was arrested, handcuffed and placed inside a squad car. When he was taken out of the squad car, a bag containing five smaller bags of cocaine was found inside.

The cocaine brought to investigators by the informant weighed 3 grams and the cocaine found in the squad car weighed 5.6 grams. Grady also had $400 in marked money, which the informant had used to buy the cocaine, in his possession.

Grady was one of two people arrested in March after an early-morning search at a residence in the 200 block of Tanager Path in Mankato. The other man arrested was 27-year-old Steven Rena Stone Jr., a man investigators said was a member of a Chicago gang called the Black P Stone Nation.

Both men, described as “mid-level” cocaine dealers by investigators, eventually pleaded guilty to having 64 grams of cocaine at the Tanager Path residence. Members of the Drug Task Force also tied them to 40 ecstasy tablets found in a residence in the 100 block of Glenwood Avenue.

Stone, who already had posted a total of $1.2 million in bonds for his release for three previous drug arrests, was sentenced to 55 months in prison in May.

Grady was sentenced to 33 months in prison in June, but the sentence was stayed with the conditions he serve 112 days in jail, complete a chemical dependency program and submit to random searches and drug tests.

He was released from the Blue Earth County Jail on June 24. Six felony drug charges were filed against Grady in Nicollet County District Court Monday and his bail was set at $200,000 with conditions or $100,000 without.

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