High Mass: Flagler County Inmates Were Running Drug Operation During Jail Church Services

Joshua Siedel, 32, Caleb Tucker, 30, and Stephen Horton, 46, all three convicted felons with previous state prison stints, all three either awaiting sentence or serving sentences on new charges at the county jail, face yet new charges following an investigation that placed Siedel and Tucker at the center of a drug-dealing operation inside the Flagler County jail. The dealing took place during church services. 

According to a Sheriff’s Office release, detectives determined that Suboxone, one of the drugs sold, “was obtained through pharmaceutical diversion, in which an inmate, who is prescribed Suboxone through contracted jail medical services to help them break their addiction, illegally distributed Suboxone to other inmates within the jail in exchange for commissary items.”

The release notes that “There is no evidence of employees or contractors violating the law or assisting in any illegal distribution of narcotics in the facility,” but provides no explanation for the fentanyl discovered in Tucker’s possession. 

The Sheriff’s Office’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) conducted an undercover operation at the jail on Tuesday after learning of the insider drug trading. The operation was to confirm what had been observed on surveillance video previously. “Church service was one of the events identified as one of the primary areas of drug transactions,” the defendants’ arrest reports state. 

Detectives had by then reviewed several hours of surveillance footage over several weeks and determined that it had been an ongoing scheme as Tucker “was observed receiving payment from multiple inmates and facilitating narcotic transactions with [Siedel],” the reports state. Siedel and Tucker were identified as the main distributors. 

On Tuesday, inmates from several detention blocks had gathered for a service at 7:30 p.m. The service is held in Classroom A. During the service, Siedel allegedly sold Horton a small, orange-stained paper substance, later identified as Suboxone, wrapped in a small piece of cardboard. Horton paid him with packs of coffee, which are used as currency at the jail, keeping the drug packet in his hand for a period before hiding it in his sock. Tucker took the coffee packets and concealed them in his uniform, then brazenly flipped off the surveillance camera. 

Detectives and corrections deputies waited for the church service to end, then entered the classroom “and immediately ordered all inmates to the ground and secured/separated all involved parties,” the reports state. Many were handcuffed. Horton was later strip-searched. 

 A deputy who searched Horton found the orange substance in the cardboard wrap in Horton’s right sock. “While taking off his right sock, Horton] pulled it off rapidly and forcefully” his arrest report states. “When he did so, Deputy [Walker] Skoglund observed an unknown object fly from the sock, hit the wall, then [fall] to the ground.” The search over, Skoglund walked Horton out only for Horton to “attempt to kick away the item, in an attempt to destroy it or prevent its discovery.” Detectives took the substance and tested it. 

When detectives interviewed Horton, he “continued to lie,” and was charged with smuggling and tampering with evidence, each a second degree felony, and possession of a controlled substance, a third degree felony. 

Waiting for the church service to end before deputies and detectives entered the classroom was neither for constitutional nor devotional deference, but for tactical reasons: the inmates’ cells were being searched. During the search of P Block, a deputy located in Tucker’s bunk a piece of paper with a dry, clear substance inside a box of green tea. Tucker had the cell to himself, using the top bunk for storage. The substance tested positive for fentanyl. 

“I didn’t sell anything,” Tucker told detectives when they interviewed him. He said he didn;t know anything about any drug activity, “even though detectives never mentioned anything about narcotics or sales,” his arrest report states. 

Tucker was released from state prison in October 2024 after serving almost a year on a sentence for heroin and meth manufacturing and other drug charges. He was arrested last September on new drug charges, pleaded in October to two third degree felonies and was sentenced to a year at the county jail, with credit for time served. He would have been released in a few months.  He now faces two new third-degree felonies–sale and possession. 

Horton has been at the jail since his September arrest on five drug charges, including a first degree felony charge of trafficking fentanyl and three other felonies. At the end of January he pleaded to two second degree felonies and one third-degree felony. He was to be sentenced on April 7, conditionally to 30 months of state prison, with half a year’s credit for time served. That, of course, is no longer on the table, and his eventual sentence is likely to be aggravated. He was in state prison for half a year between 2023 and 2024 on a previous sentence for meth possession. 

Siedel also served a state prison stint previously–almost four years, after a 2021 sentence on charges of making written death threats, fleeing police, aggravated stalking and dealing in stolen property. He’d been at the center of a high-profile arrest in May 2021 when he was in a two-hour standoff with deputies after a chase down U.S. 1 (and was especially concerned about his phone’s safety). 

Seidel was again arrested last Sept. 10, less than a month after his release from prison, on a probation violation after meth and cocaine showed up in a urine test, among other violations. Awaiting the disposition on that new case, he got angry with his malfunctioning tablet on October 30, smashed it and broke it. That added a misdemeanor charge–and yet another probation violation. He pleaded and was sentenced to a year at the county jail. 

“Now they’ll rack themselves up plenty of prison time, all for some cookies and chips,” Sheriff Rick Staly was quoted as saying in the release. “We don’t tolerate poison peddlers or illegal drugs in the community, and I sure as hell won’t tolerate it [in] our jail.”