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Former employee charged for bringing addiction treatment drug into Wildwood

Sabine Poux
/
KDLL

A former Department of Corrections employee is facing charges for supplying a drug to treat opioid addiction to an inmate at Wildwood Pretrial Facility. The state is also charging her and another former Wildwood employee for having sex with a person serving a sentence in DOC custody.

The charges date back to an incident last June, in which an inmate at Wildwood Pretrial Facility was allegedly found to be in possession of controlled substances.

Charging documents say Dylan Wright — who is serving a decades-long sentence for robbery and assault — attacked and injured a correctional officer who seized the drugs from him at the pretrial facility. Wright was at Wildwood Pretrial for three days before he was transferred to Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward, according to DOC Spokesperson Betsy Holley. The correctional officer, Andrew Kerr, was sent to Central Peninsula Hospital with injuries to his hand.

At the time, Wright was charged on four misdemeanor counts. The state says it then began an investigation into the case.

A separate set of charging documents, filed by the State of Alaska last week, says Wright and then-Department of Corrections employee Jessica Schroeder were found to be in possession of suboxone. A spokesperson for the Department of Law, Patty Sullivan, said Schroeder was found to be passing suboxone to Wright at Wildwood.

Suboxone is a prescription drug used to treat opioid addiction. Some jails and prisons in the Alaska correctional system have opioid use treatment programs; Wildwood Pretrial does not. Earlier this spring, a correctional officer at Spring Creek in Seward was charged for bringing buprenorphine — another drug used to treat opioid addiction — into the prison there.

The state also charged Schroeder and another former Wildwood employee, Amanda Caban, for having sexual contact with a person in DOC custody who was serving a sentence with an ankle monitor. Schroeder is also facing three seemingly unrelated drug charges.

Schroeder and Caban are no longer employed by Corrections, according to Holley. Both left their jobs at Wildwood shortly after the alleged incident — Schroeder on July 1, 2022, and Caban on June 25, 2022.

Sabine Poux is a producer and reporter for the Brave Little State podcast of Vermont Public. She was formerly news director and evening news host at KDLL in Kenai.

Originally from New York, Sabine has lived and reported in Argentina and Vermont and Kenai.
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