Couple found ‘passed out’ by a dumpster ‘with a bag of syringes,’ tin foil and a white substance, cops say

BELLEVIEW, Fla. – A call about “two suspicious individuals by the dumpster behind the dance studio” led to a disturbing find for police and new drug charges for the people they found.

Authorities in Florida said the caller wanted them “trespassed from the vicinity,” so they could be arrested for returning, but cops didn’t need a next time after finding the couple “passed out.”

The arrest reports from the afternoon of Oct. 25 said the woman, Hope Elizabeth Wright, “had a laptop in front of her with a bag of syringes,” and the man, Garrett Dale Thalgott, was “leaning on the dumpster [and] had syringes and tin foil on the left side of him, and on the right side he had a white substance.”

The officers also said they “located a spoon containing a ball of cotton,” noting, “Drug users heat heroin with a spoon and then inject it using the syringes located by both subjects.”

Both were detained.

“The white substance was methamphetamine,” Thalgott reportedly told authorities, “but [he] thought it was laced with fentanyl because everything is laced with fentanyl.”

Cops said the substance was neither; that it tested presumptive positive for heroin.

Then, the arrest reports said they searched Wright and Thalgott’s “belongings and found syringes, heroin, knives, lighters, and [a] flashlight,” plus backpacks containing “a box full of additional syringes.”

Wright and Thalgott were taken to jail separately. Each was charged with possession of heroin and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Despite multiple arrests for both, this is the first time they were arrested together.

This was Wright’s seventh arrest in Marion County. She faced a lot of drug charges, along with some theft, and served two sentences in state prison: six months of a year sentence for drug crimes here, and almost a year of an 18-month sentence for drug crimes in Citrus County.

Thalgott has been arrested at least five times in Marion County, mostly on theft and drug charges. He also served more than five months of a 13-month sentence in state prison for five thefts and drug crimes in Sumter County.

Wright’s latest arrest report listed Thalgott her fiancé and next of kin. His listed his sister.

Bail for Wright, 37, and Thalgott, 36, were set at $3,500, and neither has been released from jail.