Prison Aide Cops To Indiana Lasagna Smuggle

DECEMBER 20--A nursing aide pleaded guilty today to hiding cocaine and marijuana inside a bowl of frozen lasagna that she tried to smuggle into the Indiana prison where she worked, records show.

During a Superior Court hearing this morning, Regina Davis, 47, copped to felony narcotics charges in connection with an incident earlier this year at the Indiana State Prison, a maximum security facility housing more than 2000 adult males.

A sentencing hearing for Davis, who is free on $1500 bond, is scheduled for January 31.

Davis, who has been licensed as a certified nurse aide since 2003, was responsible for distributing medicine to inmates at the Michigan City lockup.

In July, Davis (seen at right) arrived for work one morning toting a batch of lasagna that a guard thought “looked odd” as it passed through an X-ray machine, according to a probable cause affidavit. A secondary examination of the Italian delicacy turned up several packages wrapped in electrical tape that contained cocaine (about three ounces) and pot (1.7 ounces).

During questioning, Davis claimed not to know the lasagna included an extra layer of controlled substances, adding that a female acquaintance had just given her “two containers of lasagna to eat.” Davis’s phone, however, contained photos of the drug packages that had been snapped a day earlier.

Davis said that unknown individuals had threatened her safety and that of her brother, who, she said, had just been released from a prison work release program in South Bend. Davis claimed she was instructed to go with “a black guy” to pick up the drugs (some of which she admitted wrapping herself). The narcotics, she added, were to be picked by an individual who stopped by the prison’s “drug room” and used a code phrase (“they were there to pick up some cream for their feet”). (2 pages)