Mallory Smith

A Powell woman is heading to prison after driving under the influence of narcotics with her infant in the backseat.

Mallory E. Smith recently accepted a three- to five-year prison sentence as part of an agreement with the Park County Attorney’s Office. In exchange for having three other charges dismissed, Smith pleaded guilty to felony counts of endangering a child and possessing a controlled substance for a third or subsequent time.

District Court Judge Bill Simpson accepted the deal last month and finalized it in a March 15 order.

Court records say Smith drove off the side of Lane 11 on the afternoon of Oct. 26, not far from her residence southwest of Powell. Passersby stopped to see if the 35-year-old was OK and called authorities after being concerned about her welfare. Park County Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Lawler wrote in an affidavit that Smith appeared to be under the influence of drugs, with her boyfriend reporting that he had to break out the window of her Volkswagen to get into the vehicle.

Smith would later tell Lawler that she’d smoked fentanyl with a woman in Lovell earlier in the day before heading for home. An ambulance crew from Powell Valley Hospital wound up administering Narcan — a drug that can reverse a narcotic overdose — at the scene “to bring [Smith] back from her drug-induced state,” Lawler wrote.

Smith’s 5-month-old child was in the backseat and was taken home by her boyfriend.

The deputy later found two small baggies on the front seat that appeared to contain small amounts of meth, black tar heroin and fentanyl. Another two dozen tablets of what looked like fentanyl were found in Smith’s purse, charging documents say. It amounted to 14.6 grams of apparent fentanyl, 1.2 grams of meth and 0.8 grams of suspected heroin, according to Lawler.

Lawler also found $2,500 in cash that Smith had just withdrawn from the bank, plus a receipt showing she’d withdrawn another $1,500 the previous day.

Smith told the deputy that the baggies belonged to the Lovell woman, though she wasn’t sure how they got into her vehicle, and that the pills in her purse were not fentanyl, though she didn’t know what they were, charging documents say.

According to Smith’s account, she’d been pulled over in Big Horn County earlier that afternoon and checked out by an ambulance crew before continuing on her way, eventually waking up off the road near her house.

Deputy Lawler wrote that Smith was “very cooperative and appeared to be honest with me and was very remorseful.”

Smith was released on a $50,000 surety bond in early November, but was re-arrested a couple weeks later, when a urine test came back presumptive positive for meth. She denied recent use of the drug, but the presumptive result led to her bond being revoked. Smith has remained in custody since then.

Deputy Park County Attorney Larry Eichele sought to have the $50,000 bond forfeited to the state, but shortly before a February hearing on the matter, test results showed the presumptive result was a false positive, according to an order from Judge Simpson. Because the result was erroneous, there was no bond violation, Simpson ruled, denying the request to forfeit the bond.

Smith had sought to be released from jail to attend an inpatient treatment program in Casper, but took the plea deal shortly after making the request. As of Wednesday, she remained at the Park County Detention Center, awaiting transport to the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk.