(ETH) – A bizarre and sad report is coming out regarding a child abuse investigation that involved a pastor in central Arkansas who was charged with drug charges after police discovered he was using meth at his church with his parishioners, according to court filings reported by the News and Observer.
The pastor, Lloyd Eddie Lasker Jr., 49, was reportedly charged with possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia, and possession of a gun by a convicted felon after police discovered him at a gas station in Mayflower on Sept. 22nd with possession of meth, according to the Conway Police Department in an affidavit filed in Faulkner County Circuit Court. Mayflower is a town of fewer than 2,000 people and is about 30 minutes north of Little Rock, according to the latest U.S. Census records.
The pastor led The House of Refuge and Deliverance Ministries located on a rural stretch of highway within the town’s city limits. According to the details of the report, The Conway Police Detective Brittani Little was called to the church on Sept. 18 for a welfare check, an affidavit for a search warrant states. It was then that the detective claimed that she found an emaciated 21-month-old child “with multiple bruises from head to toe,” with his mother and Lasker at the church.
The child is now in the ICU “with a brain bleed and extreme malnourishment,” according to the affidavit. Several days later, Lasker was visited by the detective and other officers to ask him some questions about the child abuse case where Lasker was reportedly not at home but later found him in a white Dodge truck parked at an Exxon gas station in Mayflower, where the officers found Lasker in the passenger seat of the truck and a second man, Timothy Bynum, standing near the driver’s side.
They immediately did a full search of the vehicle where they discovered 4 grams of meth in a small bag inside the door panel, a pipe, another device for smoking, and more meth that was found on the floor of the passenger side. Bynum, who said the drugs belonged to Lasker, was arrested on charges relating to the meth found in the door and the pipe, according to police.
Detective Little also conducted an interview with Lasker regarding the child abuse investigation, during which time she said he reportedly admitting to her of trying “to exorcise a demon out of (the child) but he would not explain how he did this.” Lasker went on to confess that he “has used meth in the church several times” with the child’s mother and other church members, the affidavit states.
