Police Stop Driver for Cell Phone Use While Driving, Find a Box Full of Marijuana Plants

Piedmont police today, Friday, arrested a man on an out-of-state robbery warrant and on suspicion of a variety of drug-related offenses, including possession of a trunk full of dried marijuana plants, a Piedmont Police Department spokesperson said.

Officer Joe Garcia spotted the man talking on a cell phone while driving on Grand Avenue near Moraga Avenue at 1:29 p.m., Detective George Phifer said.

Garcia pulled the vehicle over and, as he approached, smelled the odor of marijuana coming from the vehicle, Phifer said.

The man was identified as William Gyorgy, 45, of San Francisco. 

Phifer said a computer check showed Gyorgy had an old outstanding arrest warrant for robbery from Washington state that described him as possibly armed and dangerous. 

At that point, Gyorgy was ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint

Poice searched the vehicle, turning up more than a pound of marijuana packaged for sale, a trunk or box filled with parts of dried cannabis plants, drug paraphernalia, suspected methamphetamines and several prescription drugs, including the narcotic Vicodin, Phifer said. Gyorgy had no prescriptions for those medications, he said.

The arrested man was identified as William Gyorgy, 45, of San Francisco. 

Gyorgy was in police custody this afternoon and was scheduled to be taken to the county-operated Glenn Dyer Detention Facility in Oakland later today.

Washington does not wish to extradite Gyorgy on the old warrant at this time, Phifer said.

It was the second time in just over a week that a routine traffic stop by Officer Garcia turned up a driver with an outstanding felony warrant.

On Oct. 16, Garcia stopped a truck with expired registration stickers on Trestle Glen Road. That driver, Kurt Von Boeherns, 27, of Oakland, had an outstanding $1 million arrest warrant from San Francisco Superior Court for attempted murder.

Garcia joined the Piedmont Police Department in May of this year.

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