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Ex-postal worker pleads guilty to drug charges
Sentencing will be next month
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A postal worker arrested over the summer for making methamphetamine deliveries while on her route pleaded guilty to felony charges Thursday.

Darlene Waters, 45, of Dawson County entered an open-ended plea for distributing meth.

  

Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 5 before Northeastern Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Jason Deal.

  

The maximum sentence for selling meth is 30 years per count. Assistant District Attorney John Wilbanks said his office will push for prison time.

Waters and her live-in boyfriend Glen Alan Corindia, 46, were arrested May 22 after Waters delivered a phone book containing meth to a mailbox in eastern Dawson.

  

Waters was charged with selling and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, manufacturing and possession of marijuana and two counts of using communication frequencies for criminal use.

  

Shortly after her arrest, Waters was fired from the postal service in Dawson County, where she had worked since May 1995.

  

While she pled guilty to all seven counts against her, Deal accepted an “Alford plea” for the charges of possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and manufacturing marijuana.

  

An Alford plea is a guilty plea entered as part of a plea bargain by a defendant who denies committing the crime or who does not actually admit his or her guilt.

  

Rob McNeill, her attorney, contends the meth was for Waters’ personal use and she “had no intention to distribute.”

  

According to court testimony, the marijuana plants belonged to Corindia and were being grown without Waters’ knowledge. 

  

Corindia, who also worked for the postal service, pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana and methamphetamine and manufacturing marijuana shortly after his arrest and entered local drug treatment court.

  

U.S. Postal Service spokesman Michael Miles said Corindia was fired Aug. 28.

Miles would not discuss the circumstances that led to the termination, saying only that Corindia could protest the decision.