ITHACA, N.Y. — Police executed a search warrant at a duplex home in Enfield early Monday morning, officials said.
Around 5:08 a.m., police were at a home at 1718 Mecklenburg Road in the town of Enfield with a narcotic warrant.
According to a press release, police, “conducted a search of the residence and located an amount of heroin, an amount of a yet to be determined narcotic, a sawed off shotgun, and other items consistent with narcotic sales.”
Carl L. Williams, 30, was taken into custody and charged with felonies for third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, subdivision 1, third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, subdivision 12, and felony criminal possession of a firearm.
Williams was arraigned in the Town of Enfield Court and remanded to the Tompkins County Jail on $10,000 cash or $20,000 bond.
A woman who lives in an apartment that shares a driveway to the duplex home said she witnessed the entire incident after she woke up between 4 and 5 a.m.
Due to the nature of the police incident, she declined to give her name. But another witness who lives further down the road verified parts of her account.
The woman said she could not go back to sleep after waking up suddenly on Monday morning, so she started cleaning out her refrigerator. Then she went to the bathroom, where the window faces the home police raided.
“I heard a big boom and lights flashing like a gun had went off or a flare,” she said. “I was like, you know, the Lord must have woke me up.”
She said she looked out the window and saw at least three Tompkins County Sheriff’s department vehicles and four other vehicles, which she says were unmarked.
She said a van — resembling a utility van used by electricians or plumbers — rolled into the parking lot and armed officers wearing helmets and fatigues got out of it and went toward the duplex. She clarified that the van was not the SWAT Truck sometimes used by the Ithaca Police Department and Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department.
She said she knows that a woman lives in the upstairs unit of the duplex and a man and woman live downstairs. She said she saw the man taken away in handcuffs and the woman was let go.
The woman, she said, was “screaming, loud, upset, frustrated,” and the woman’s father quickly arrived at the scene.
She said police were at the scene past 7 a.m., and her grandson did not go to his college classes this morning because he was scared to leave her alone at the apartment.
“He was upset. He didn’t know what was going on,” she said, adding that police never contacted the people who live nearby to let them know whether they were in danger or not.
The Ithaca Police Department, SWAT Team, Ithaca Police Department Investigations Division, Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office, and New York State Police Community Narcotics Enforcement Team issued the search warrant.