Two former Mountain Home residents, including a man who once described himself as a “pipeline” carrying drugs to locations in this area and the southern part of the state, were sentenced to prison in Federal District Court in El Dorado January 15.
Thirty-seven-year-old Willis Devin Johnson, who at one time listed an address along South College Street in Mountain Home, was sentenced to 188 months in federal prison to be followed by five years of supervised release.
Sarah Lavon Paxton who was in the car with Johnson when it was stopped at a car wash in Bearden, a small town in Ouachita County was sentenced to 10 years in prison with five years of supervised release.
Federal and state court records show Paxton’s residence as being in Mountain Home and on other documents she is said to have lived in Yellville.
When Johnson and Paxton were taken into custody, they were reported to be in possession of three pounds of methamphetamine.
The pair was indicted by a grand jury sitting in the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas/El Dorado Division late last year.
Johnson and Paxton have had a number of felony drug cases opened on them in Baxter, Boone, Benton and Crawford Counties as well as in south Arkansas. Many of the cases were put on inactive status after the pair was charged by federal officials.
According to a probable cause affidavit in the South Arkansas case, police were tipped by a confidential informant that arrangements had been made with Johnson to purchase methamphetamine. Johnson and the confidential informant/drug buyer eventually settled on a sale of a quantity of the drug for $1,000.
Facebook conversations between Johnson and the informant were monitored for several days by an agent with the 13th Judicial District Drug Task Force.
Johnson eventually told the informant he was leaving Mountain Home and that he would first go to El Dorado but would come back to Fordyce to make the sale. The vehicle carrying Johnson and Paxton was spotted several times as it made its way toward the El Dorado area. DTF agents came in physical contact with the vehicle after it pulled into the car wash at Bearden.
A search of the gray Nissan Altima, identified as belonging to a rental car company in Mountain Home, turned up marijuana and a substantial quantity of methamphetamine.
According to the probable cause affidavit, when police interviewed Paxton, she invoked her 5th Amendment rights.
Johnson was reported to have told investigators that he was not a “drug dealer” and that he “just connects people from northern Arkansas with people in southern Arkansas with methamphetamine.”
Willis said the large cache of methamphetamine found in the vehicle at the time he was arrested was being taken back to Mountain Home where two individuals were set to pay $6,700 for the drug. Willis said he would get $700 as his cut.
Willis’ latest arrest in Baxter County came in early May last year when he went to the probation and parole office in Mountain Home to meet with his supervising officer. He was reported to have been in what was described as a “highly impaired” state and when tested showed positive for the presence of methamphetamine in his system.
When his truck was searched, officers found almost 4 grams of methamphetamine in a small plastic bag.
He has pled not guilty to his Baxter County charges of possession of methamphetamine and public intoxication.
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