Text messages to Edgartown police net drug suspects

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In a scenario worthy of the television program “World’s Dumbest Criminals,” a police officer arrested a New Bedford man last week, after he tried to sell prescription narcotics by text message to an Edgartown police officer.

The number to which he mistakenly sent the message is the mobile phone number of Edgartown police officer Michael Gazaille.

Officer Gazaille said he first got a text message from an unknown number in May, while off-duty, offering to sell the prescription narcotic oxycodone. He engaged the sender, but the text conversation soon stopped.

Last Thursday, while on patrol in Edgartown, he got another text message from the same number.

“This text message read, ‘yO, I got oxy 15,'” Officer Gazaille wrote in his report. “I know, through my training and experience and the previous text messages from this number, that this was a solicitation to buy 15 milligram oxycodone tablets.”

Police had no idea where the sender was, until another fortuitous coincidence occurred.

The sender wanted to arrange a meeting at a Honey Dew donut shop, near the Wonder Bowl. Edgartown police Officer David Rossi, who was following the text exchange, recognized that description as the New Bedford neighborhood where he grew up. The Wonder Bowl is a popular bowling alley.

Officer Gazaille contacted New Bedford police, who put the area under surveillance and soon arrested a suspect identified as Carlos Alberto Guadalupe-Morales. They also arrested a juvenile suspect.