Athens cop couldn’t believe his eyes as woman walked in traffic

Latasha Jean Baker

By Joe Johnson

Sergeant Hilton Cooper was parked at the FedEx Store on West Broad Street the night of May 21st when he looked up the road to see why motorists were honking their horns.

He quickly found out that they were trying to get the attention of 38-year-old Latasha Baker.

“She was walking against oncoming traffic in the eastbound lanes,”’the officer said in a report of the incident. “I could not believe my eyes initially, due to usually it is a person walking across the roadway and not down the roadway with oncoming traffic. The female seemed unfazed as she walked calmly.”

Cooper drove up to where Baker was and upon getting out of his patrol car to speak with her it became readily apparent what the problem was.

The woman slurred her words as she spoke nonsensically and gave other indications of drug abuse.

Baker, who is homeless, has a history of contacts with the police so that she is flagged in their database as a user of crack cocaine and methamphetamine.

When the police officer asked Baker if she had anything he should know about, she held out a small baggie containing a “substantial amount of a crystal substance consistent with meth,” and then snatched her hand back as Cooper reached for it.

Another officer arrived at the scene and used a field test kit to confirm that the substance was methamphetamine.

Baker was arrested on charges of possession of methamphetamine, obstruction of law enforcement, illegal use of a highway by a pedestrian, and for being a pedestrian under the influence of drugs.