The car was sitting in the car wash. The driver had a needle in her arm, police say

A report of a suspicious car parked in a stall in a Myrtle Beach car wash led to a woman’s arrest after police say they found her with a needle in her arm on Sunday morning.

Myrtle Beach police were called to the Sandlapper Car Wash at 504 13th Ave. S. on a narcotics complaint shortly before 9 a.m. Officers say they spotted a car in a stall at the car wash and found 34-year-old Kelly Jo Veazey “in the driver’s seat with a syringe in her arm,” according to a police report.

Officer Logan Cooper said he detained Veazey and seized the syringe and two pink plastic bags containing a tan powder that field-tested positive for heroin.

“Next to the driver’s door,” Cooper noted in the report, he “also found two pink plastic bags laying on the ground that had a tan residue within them.”

The heroin weighed approximately 2.4 grams, according to the report.

Veazey was charged with heroin possession and police noted it wasn’t her first drug offense.

Veazey was convicted of a drug possession charge in 2013 and was released on time served. She pleaded guilty to another drug possession charge in 2015 and was sentenced to a year in jail with credit for the 220 days she served awaiting trial, according to online court records.

Opioid addictions continue to claim the lives of many along the Grand Strand.

Myrtle Beach police responded to 27 calls that involved heroin or fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, in the month of January. Seventeen of those calls were overdoses.

Officers at the Myrtle Beach Police Department are set to start training this month to be able to carry and administer Narcan, a drug used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose.

This story was originally published March 12, 2017 at 2:14 PM with the headline "The car was sitting in the car wash. The driver had a needle in her arm, police say."