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After stopping the car at 7:30 last night, PAPD Officer John Lizares ran a computer check that turned up outstanding warrants on the driver, Leonard Watts of East Orange, a mechanic who records show has 10 felony convictions, the authority’s Joseph Pentangelo said.
The vehicle also belonged to a customer who didn’t know that Watts had taken it, he said.
Returning to the car, Lizares smelled marijuana and ordered the girl out, Pentangelo said.
She gave the officer a bag of marijuana, then pulled out the 11½-gram bag of cocaine — saying that Watts “handed her the cocaine and told her to stuff it in her pants because he was going to be arrested,” he said.
Police signed a juvenile complaint for drug possession against the girl, who was released to her parents.
Watts, meanwhile, was being held on $100,000 bail in the Hudson County Correctional Facility, charged with drug possession with the intent to distribute it and employing a juvenile in the commission of both a crime and a drug offense.
The vehicle owner declined to press charges for unauthorized use, Pentangelo said.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy PORT AUTHORITY PD
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