NEW HANOVER COUNTY — A grand jury has handed down an indictment for James Edwin Yokeley Jr., now on slightly different charges than originally brought forth.
Yokeley, the 66-year-old former Surry County Board of Elections chair, was arrested in August after Wilmington Police Department officers were flagged down at a gas station to investigate a substance put into the beverages of Yokeley’s step-granddaughter and her friend, 16 and 15 years old.
READ MORE: 3 charges dropped against former elections official accused of spiking teens’ ice cream
ALSO: Former BOE chairman charged with felony child abuse faces more legal trouble
The WPD obtained video surveillance from the Dairy Queen on Oleander Drive that allegedly shows Yokeley placing something, believed to be pills, into the frozen desserts. The girls, who discovered the pills and flagged down help, did not ingest them.
The indictment, issued on Jan. 20, states Yokeley knowingly put trazodone in the girls’ beverages. Trazodone is a prescription antidepressant that is often prescribed off-label for insomnia.
Yokeley has now been charged with two counts of distributing unlawful food or beverage and one count of intentional felony child abuse resulting in serious physical injury.
The unlawful food or beverage charge is a Class C offense under General Statute 14‑401.11. The subsection that applies to the case notes it is against law to distribute any “poisonous chemical or compound or any foreign substance such as, but not limited to, razor blades, pins, and ground glass, which might cause death, serious physical injury or serious physical pain and discomfort.”
Trazodone is not a controlled substance, which led to the dismissal of charges related to controlled substances originally made against Yokeley. This included two counts of contaminating food and drink with a controlled substance and felony possession of schedule I narcotics.
An onsite analysis by the WPD indicated the potential of MDMA and cocaine in the pills, which were sent off to a lab for further testing. However, the official lab results showed the ice cream did not contain a controlled substance under North Carolina law.
Yokeley has maintained his innocence and stated in a letter sent to the board of elections in August that he was “prayerfully confident” he would be exonerated, as the case’s “truth and facts” came to light. He appeared back in court in November due to allegedly breaking a no-contact order with his step-granddaughter.
His case has been moved to superior court and an administrative hearing has been scheduled for March 9 at 10 a.m. in courtroom 403 of the New Hanover County Courthouse. The previously scheduled disposition hearing for April 2 has been canceled.
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