SUSSEX COUNTY — A Sussex County couple has pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell more than 3½ ounces of crack cocaine, the county prosecutor’s office said. Bruce Parks, 41, and Patricia Jelessis, 40, were arrested Sept. 25 while Jelessis was returning to her Wantage home from Fort Lee, where Parks had instructed her to buy the drug, which authorities said...
SUSSEX COUNTY — A Sussex County couple has pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell more than 3½ ounces of crack cocaine, the county prosecutor’s office said.
Bruce Parks, 41, and Patricia Jelessis, 40, were arrested Sept. 25 while Jelessis was returning to her Wantage home from Fort Lee, where Parks had instructed her to buy the drug, which authorities said has an estimated street value of $8,000.
Following their arrest, a .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun owned by Parks was uncovered in a storage unit in Wantage, authorities said.
Parks, an ex-convict who served five years in prison on drug and others offenses in the 1990s, pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute and possession of a firearm by a felon, both second-degree offenses.
Second-degree crimes are punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Jelessis, who lived in the Lake Neepaulin section of Wantage in a home she shared with Parks, pleaded guilty to accomplice liability to the distribution of a CDS, a second-degree offense.
On July 3, 1991, Parks was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of employing a juvenile in a drug distribution scheme, burglary, theft, escape and possession of a CDS, according to the state Department of Corrections web site. He was paroled on July 2, 1996.
Parks and Jelessis pleaded guilty last Monday in Superior Court in Newton. They are scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 17.
The two-month investigation was conducted by the Sussex County Gangs, Guns and Narcotics Task Force and the State Police at the Sussex barracks.
Lake Neepaulin in Wantage, where two people were arrested and admitted to conspiring to sell crack cocaine.
