WASHINGTON CITY — Authorities arrested a local woman after receiving a burglary-in-progress call related to a storage facility in Washington City.
Washington City Police officers arrived at the scene Friday and arrested Mandy Lynn, 37, of St. George. Officers said they discovered Lynn in a storage unit that did not belong to her.
Lynn was booked into jail Friday and faces one count of third-degree felony burglary and two misdemeanors, including possession of a controlled substance and possession of paraphernalia, police said.
A bystander phoned police dispatch after hearing someone shuffling around in one of the storage units, and indicated that someone may have broken into the unit by climbing through a small space between the interior wall and the ceiling, according to a police affidavit submitted to the Washington County Attorney’s Office for review.
Responding officers found the door to the unit cracked open enough for them to see the feet of someone moving around inside. They opened the storage unit door and found a woman, later identified as Lynn.
During an interview, Lynn reportedly told officers she used a small gate as a ladder to go in between the top of the storage units, just as the 911 caller suspected, and said she did not know where the gate came from. According to the 911 caller, the ladder was not there during previous visits to the storage facility.
Lynn told police she rented a unit that shared a wall with the room officers initially found her in, and during a search of the defendant’s storage room it is alleged that officers found a number of items that did not belong to the defendant.
Lynn denied accessing the adjacent unit and explained she shared the unit with another female that was also small in stature, the report said. She told police that she only knew that other woman by a nickname but failed to provide police with any other information needed to identify that other woman.
According to officers in the report, Lynn had wounds on her legs that were consistent with a blood smear also found on the wall near the crawl space, which Lynn denied to police.
Officers also found a number of syringes on a table located in front of the unit, which Lynn allegedly admitted were hers, and told the officers the brown liquid in two of them was heroin and possibly methamphetamine. She was then transported to Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane and booked on the warrants while additional charges were submitted to the Washington County Attorney’s Office for review.
Two months ago, officers also arrested Lynn after being dispatched to a local storage facility in Washington City April 13. During that reported incident. Officers arrived at that scene to find four individuals sitting inside a car. Officers said they found drugs on one of the passengers and a bong sitting near his lap, at which time a K-9 was called out and alerted on the storage unit that was later searched once the warrant was signed.
During the search, officers located a small purse containing multiple syringes filled with what appeared to be heroin; a small silicone jar with a white substance that later tested positive for methamphetamine; a plastic bag containing what appeared to be heroin and a small digital scale. In connection with the April incident, Lynn was transported to jail and later charged with misdemeanor drug and paraphernalia possession.
Lynn remains in jail on $5,000 bail at the time of this report.
This report is based on statements from police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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