Troopers bust one, seek another for dealing meth

PALMER — A woman was arrested after Alaska State Troopers, who had just found hundreds of dollars worth of drugs inside her car, called to say she could pick it up.

According to documents Alaska State Trooper Shayne Calt filed in the case against Aniska Demientieff, 27, Palmer, the investigation began Oct. 1 with a tip that a man she was associated with, Jonathan Gilliam, 23, was driving around town with her, dealing methamphetamines out of a pair of lockboxes — one cube shaped, the other a black oval — while carrying a pistol.

The next day Calt watched Demientieff and Gilliam set off from a home on Dogwood Avenue in Palmer.

They both got out at Bishop’s Attic and went inside. Calt strolled by the car and saw the two boxes he was looking for. The pair then got back in and headed toward Wasilla, but was stopped on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway at Hemmer Road.

An AST police dog, Joel Miner’s K-9 Chevron, sniffed drugs in the car, which was evidence enough to impound it. Gilliam and Demientieff were let go.

On Oct. 3, Calt got a search warrant. In the cube-style box he reports he found “a large chunk of methamphetamine” that weighed 5 grams and 23 grams of psychedelic psilocybin mushrooms. Meth generally goes for about $100 a gram.

Gilliam’s wallet was also in the car, stuffed with $867 in cash. On the same seat was another $126 in loose cash. The gun described by the complainant — a silver .22 automatic with a wood handle — was in the glove compartment of the vehicle.

In the pocket on the passenger side door was a meth pipe with residue inside. In the backseat, Calt writes, he found a men’s jacket with a scale disguised to look like an iPhone and a baggie with 52 smaller baggies stuffed inside. The smaller baggies all had meth in them.

The one Calt weighed came in at .21 grams. If the rest had similar weights and totaled about $1,000 worth of meth.

Calt writes that he “attempted to locate Gilliam and Demientieff without success.”

But then on Oct. 16, Demientieff came to pick up her vehicle.

“I told Demientieff that I had found all the meth in the car. Demientieff nodded at me,” Calt says in his affidavit. “I told Demientieff that I had found Johnny’s gun in the glove box. Demientieff said that it wasn’t Johnny’s gun. Demientieff said she didn’t really know where the gun came from. Demientieff said that I would probably find both hers and Johnny’s fingerprints and a bunch of other people’s fingerprints on it. I asked Demientieff if she just drove around with a gun in the glove box and didn’t know who it belonged to. Demientieff stated, ‘yeah, I’m kinda crazy like that.’ I told Demientieff that I had found her meth pipe in the door pocket. Demientieff said, ‘OK.’ Demientieff refused to answer any further questions.”

She was arrested for drug and weapons misconduct. As of Thursday afternoon, Demientieff had posted bail and been released from jail.

Gilliam has been convicted mostly of petty drinking and drunken driving offenses except for one case in 2008 that involved a stabbing outside of Klondike Mike’s Saloon. Gilliam stabbed a man during a fight over a pool game. He eventually pleaded guilty and received a 10-month sentence.