Cary police think phones could link trafficking suspect to ‘bad heroin’

Police seized three iPhones and three Samsung “flip phones” from the home of a man charged with drug trafficking as they investigated the deaths of three residents who died of heroin overdoses late last year.

Nearly two months after his arrest, Brock Allen Clark, 39, has not been charged in connection with the fatal overdoses, Cary police Capt. Randall Rhyne said Friday.

“We haven’t been able to say he was the source of any bad heroin,” Rhyne said. “Our investigation is continuing as to who is the source.”

Police charged Clark with heroin and cocaine trafficking in November. Police then launched an investigation to try to determine if the overdose victims may have used “bad heroin” Clark sold them, according to a search warrant application made public Friday.

The Cary investigators also are trying to determine if the tainted dope has been responsible for more fatal drug overdoses, according to the search warrant. Rhyne said there were several other drug deaths in Wake County during the same time period when three people in Cary were found dead from heroin overdoses.

Investigators seized the mobile phones from Clark’s townhouse at 146 Madison Square Lane in November after police found between 14 and 28 grams of heroin and between 28 and 200 grams of cocaine in his home, according to arrest warrants.

The fatal heroin overdoses in Cary happened between Nov. 23 and Nov. 26, according to the search warrant. On the evening of Nov. 23, Joshua Ari Marks was found dead of an overdose by his roommate in the apartment they shared on Sherwood Place. The next afternoon, police found Austen Connor Becker dead inside his home on Huntsmoor Lane.

Rhyne described the heroin overdoses and Clark’s arrest as “simultaneous,” after someone called the department and named him as the potential source for the deadly batch of heroin.

Court records show that the same day police found Becker, a woman called the police that evening and reported that there was “bad heroin” in Cary. Police investigated the woman’s claims and found that two other law enforcement agencies not named in the search warrant had investigated more than three accidental deaths linked to heroin overdoses, Detective J.A. Young wrote in the search warrant application.

Two days later, on the evening of Nov. 26, police found Allison Leigh Hurt, 39, unconscious inside a room at the Hampton Inn and Suites on Hampton Woods Lane. Hurt died at Rex Hospital in Raleigh two days later.

Police searched the hotel room and recovered “numerous items” that indicated she had ingested controlled substances, including heroin and crack cocaine, court records show. Police talked with another woman at the hotel who told them Hurt had used crack and heroin over a three-day period that began Nov. 24.

The day after Hurt died, investigators searched Clark’s townhouse. In addition to six mobile phones, the detectives seized heroin and other controlled substances, according to the search warrant.

Police are comparing data collected from the mobile phones of the people who died with phones taken from Clark’s home, court records show.

Clark was released from the Wake County jail on Dec. 19 and placed under electronic house arrest after posting a $1,010,000 bond, a jail spokeswoman said Friday.

This story was originally published January 13, 2017 at 6:01 PM with the headline "Cary police think phones could link trafficking suspect to ‘bad heroin’."