SOUTH ROYALTON — Vermont State Police and Royalton Police executed a drug-related search warrant at a home on Moses Lane on Friday.
Lt. Dustin Robinson of the Vermont State Police Narcotics Investigation Unit assisted the operation led by the state police Field Force uniformed division. He said 18 people were removed from the property and most were released. About six arrests were made, said Robinson.
At about 6 a.m., neighbor Audrey Garcia, who lives nearby on Moses Lane, said she heard an announcement over a loud speaker telling occupants of the home that police had a search warrant, followed by a loud explosion. Several minutes later she heard the message repeated, and a second loud explosion.
Over the next hour and a half she saw a large “SWAT” vehicle ramming the front porch of the house, heard what sounded like gunshots and watched several people who came out of the house taken by police to a tent set up a short distance away near Route 14.
Robinson said typically the Tactical Services Unit will use bean bag rounds to disable cameras or break windows, but that there was no exchange of gunfire during the operation.
Garcia said that the neighbors were generally quiet and polite, though their interactions were limited to occasions when her dog would stray into their yard. She said that cars came in and out of the driveway frequently at all hours of the day, and that police would check in at the house on occasion.
Another neighbor who declined to be identified said the constant drug traffic and other disturbances at the house were a “nightmare.”
