Centreville's Francisco Arellano, 29, is now officially a fugitive from the law. He was already in hot water when Fairfax County police charged him with manufacturing a controlled substance (cocaine). But things got even worse for him when he twice failed to show up in court for his arraignment.
In a Sept. 6 affidavit for a search warrant to look for cocaine, drug paraphernalia, money, records and documents in Arellano's apartment in the Lee Overlook community, police Det. L.G. Durden presented details of the case against him.
ARELLANO IS of 14801 Rydell Road, No. 304, and Durden is with the police department's Organized Crime Division, Narcotics Section. He wrote that, during August, investigation revealed that Arellano was allegedly selling cocaine out of his home.
In the affidavit, Durden wrote that he received information that Arellano reportedly is "a distributor of cocaine in the Northern Virginia area." When police executed the search warrant at his apartment, Sept. 6, they seized a 9 mm. handgun, ammunition and a holster, cocaine, scales, packaging material, cash, a laptop computer and accessories and various records and documents.
Police arrested Arellano the next day, Sept. 7, and he was supposed to be arraigned Sept. 9 in General District Court. But when he didn't show up for the proceedings, Judge Lorraine Nordlund issued a bench warrant for his arrest and set a new arraignment date for him.
That date was last Wednesday, Nov. 2, and, once again, Arellano was nowhere to be found. As a result, he was officially classified as a fugitive from justice and will eventually have to answer to his original drug charge, as well as to the offense of failure to appear.
<tgl> — Bonnie Hobbs