A Republican election official in North Carolina was arrested after he allegedly spiked his granddaughters’ ice cream with pills containing cocaine and MDMA in early August, police said.
James Edwin Yokeley Jr., 66, flagged down officers himself on Aug. 8, telling them “his two juvenile granddaughters had found two hard objects in the ice cream they had recently purchased at the Dairy Queen,” the Wilmington Police Department wrote on Facebook.
The girls, aged 15 and 16, didn’t consume the pills, which were quickly seized and taken to a state lab for testing.
Security footage at the Dairy Queen, though, cast doubt on Yokeley’s account.
The video showed Yokeley placing the pills in his granddaughters’ fresh frozen treats, police said.
Yokeley was booked on suspicion of contaminating food with a controlled substance and felony child abuse, police said.
He waited until Thursday to resign from his position as the chairman of the Surry County Board of Elections and insisted that he is “prayerfully confident” that he will be “exonerated of all accusations.”
“This decision has not been made lightly. After much prayer, thoughtful reflection and consultation, I have concluded that it’s in the best interest of the State Board of Elections, regarding my own falsely accused circumstances, to step down at this time,” Yokeley wrote to the board.
State Auditor Dave Boliek, who originally appointed Yokeley last June, also called for the disgraced chairman’s resignation.
“With his resignation, the Surry County Board and State Board can now, without distraction, move forward with the process of appointing a replacement,” Boliek assured in a statement.
Yokeley previously ran for a seat on the Surry County Board of Education, but came up short after securing 26.69% of the vote in the 2022 Republican primary.
His campaign largely revolved around national COVID policies and conspiracy theories about the validity of 2020 federal elections. He repeated similar claims on his social media and branched out into anti-vaccine stances.
T.J. Bledsoe, who wound up winning the race, told NBC News that people were largely “confused” about his bizarre focus on issues that had little to no impact on a local race.
Even after losing, Yokeley pressed on. In December 2022, he wrote that “big pharma” and the federal government were lying about the COVID vaccines that he insisted had “caused more adverse effects and deaths than all previous vaccines combined.”
There is no proof to support Yokeley’s claims, nor did he provide any proof in his posts.
Yokeley posted a $100,000 bond for his release, police said. He faces charges for contaminating food or drink with a controlled substance and felony child abuse.
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