Palatka, FL – A Putnam County man took the phrase “thesaurus of drugs” a little too literally this week when deputies pulled him over and discovered his special edition dictionary—one that definitely didn’t help with vocabulary but did contain enough fentanyl, meth, and possibly cocaine to earn him a starring role in Florida Man: The Encyclopedia of Bad Decisions.
According to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, 45-year-old Samuel Shorter was pulled over after he decided the double yellow lines on the road were merely suggestions and nearly turned his drive into a head-on collision. When deputies finally got him to stop (mid-road, because why not?), they found a scale, some weed, and—wait for it—a hollowed-out dictionary stuffed with enough narcotics to make Walter White nod in approval.
Inside the fake book? Six grams of fentanyl, four grams of meth, and a mysterious white powder that deputies assumed was cocaine because, let’s be real, it probably wasn’t powdered sugar. (Unless Shorter was really into baking while driving erratically.)
Shorter, who apparently didn’t learn his lesson after two previous prison stints for selling drugs, was arrested and charged with fleeing, resisting, and enough drug charges to fill a real dictionary. He’s now enjoying a no-bond vacation at the Putnam County Jail, where we can only hope the reading material is slightly less illegal.
Moral of the story? If you’re going to hide drugs in a book, maybe pick something less suspicious than Webster’s Dictionary of Felonies. Just a thought.