A Westville resident was arrested Wednesday on charges of possession of a narcotic drug, possession of paraphernalia, and public intoxication, Chesterton Police said.

According to police, at 9:41 p.m. officers were dispatched to the Marathon gas station at 400 S. Calumet Road in response to a report of a suspicious male subject on the premises. On their arrival, police said, officers made contact with the clerk who advised that the man had walked into the business appearing lucid, entered the restroom, and on exiting it 20 minutes later appeared “highly intoxicated.”

Officers made contact with the man, identified later as Kelly James Murphy, 28, who “was standing in one of the grocery aisles, slouching down and holding himself up by holding onto the shelves.”

One of the officers, on inspecting the restroom, recovered “two very small plastic baggies floating in the toilet water” of the type “often used to hold personal-use amounts of heroin and other illegal drugs,” police said. Also recovered from the restroom trash can was “the bottom portion of an aluminum can with burnt residue inside it,” police said.

Recovered from Murphy’s person were three syringes, one unused and capped, one used but empty, and a third containing “60 units of liquid” which subsequently field-tested “positive as an opium alkaloid,” police said.

Recovered from the back seat of Murphy’s vehicle was the other half of the aluminum can, police said, and from the ground outside his vehicle his driver’s license and an open bag containing two unused syringes and a cap.

Police also said that Murphy failed two field sobriety tests.

Murphy was transported to Porter County Jail.

Posted 11/19/2009