From Staff Reports

Johnnie Rush, who nearly a year ago made headlines around the world as the subject of a severe beating by an Asheville police officer, was arrested again recently by the city’s police.

The Asheville Citizen Times reported that Rush, 34, was arrested Jan. 28 evening “after police say they found marijuana and cocaine in his Eagle Street apartment.”

Rush was charged with felony and misdemeanor drug possession and with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia, the ACT stated, “having allegedly found a ‘clear straw with white residue,’ according to a warrant.”

In what the ACT described as “a scant search warrant probable cause affidavit,” police wrote “that they’d found drugs ‘in plain view in the apartment bathroom.’ They applied for the warrant to search a book bag that they said was in ‘a kitchen cupboard not normally where such items are kept.’”

The next morning, Asheville Police Department spokeswoman Christina Hallingse told the ACT that officers were called “about a civil disturbance at Rush’s home at about 5:30 p.m. Jan. 28,” the newspaper reported. “After officers said they saw drugs in the home, ‘he was arrested without incident,’ Hallingse said.

“The search warrant for the bag listed items seized as two handguns, a switchblade and a small amount of ammunition. 

“Rush said he and his girlfriend were letting a woman they knew through a friend stay at their apartment because she didn’t have a place to live. Rush and his girlfriend each have a child living with them from a previous relationship,” the ACT reported. “He said the woman began to disrupt their lives, so after two to three weeks he asked her to leave, but she argued and called the police.”