Woman Mistakenly Texted Cop, Not Dealer

JANUARY 9--Before heading off to drug rehab on New Year’s Eve, Octavia Wells allegedly decided to score some narcotics for the road.

So the 41-year-old Floridian texted her dealer that she had $45 to spend and wanted to buy “a couple of points” of fentanyl, which is drugspeak for the 1/10th of a gram increment/point the narcotic is sold in.

In her texts, Wells identified herself as “Octavia” and arranged the drug transaction.

After Wells, seen at right, drove to meet her dealer at a Tom Thumb convenience store in Panama City, she was confronted by police and arrested. It was then that Wells realized she had mistakenly contacted a cop, not a criminal.

Wells had been texting with Stephen Pettijohn, an investigator with the Bay County Sheriff’s Office who is known as “PJ.” Wells had saved the cop’s number (under his initials) in her phone after a “previous interaction” with Pettijohn that is not further described in a complaint affidavit. 

The prior “interaction” was with the sheriff’s Special Investigations Division, which handles drug-related probes. Pettijohn is pictured below.

Wells told cops that Pettijohn’s initials were “similar to her drug dealers,” which caused the mix-up. Wells, a cop noted, “allowed me to look in her phone and I confirmed that the phone...was the same one that she was using to text Inv. Pettijohn.”

A search of Wells’s vehicle turned up a variety of drug paraphernalia, some of which tested positive for the presence of fentanyl.

Wells was charged with one felony and two misdemeanors and booked into the county jail. She was subsequently released from custody on $5000 bond and is scheduled for a January 30 arraignment. While on pretrial release, Wells has been ordered by a judge to not possess or consume alcohol and submit to random urinalysis tests. (2 pages)