By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
A Mobile man, who also provided authorities with a Texas address, was arrested in early April after he allegedly used a drone to try to deliver more than three dozen cell phones to an inmate or a group of inmates at Fountain Correctional Facility.
The air-drop scheme might have seemed good at the time, but it wound up putting 33-year-old Joshua Uziel Hunter on a path that could lead to his one day joining the men for whom the phones were intended.
Hunter was processed into the Escambia County Detention Center on April 8. Jail records show he was released April 11 on a $25,000 bond that also carried a stipulation that Hunter not set foot on Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) property.
Court documents show the attempt at airborne smuggling was made on April 4, when a drone that was later found to contain 37 cell phones was spotted by FCF officers as it hovered over prison property.
Hunter was eventually arrested by ADOC investigators. According to the county jail website, he is charged with one count each of being an “inmate in possession of a cell phone” and “trespass about a prison.”