Two men face drug charges after a traffic stop Thursday night in Morganton. The stop occurred just before midnight on South Sterling Street near East Fleming Drive. According to a news release from Morganton Department of Public Safety, officers, with the help of K-9 Shrek, locate in the vehicle 10 grams of crack cocaine and 9 hydrocodone 5mg. The Burke County Narcotics Task Force was contacted for further investigation. Charged were Kenneth Eugene Hamilton and James Brandon Tate. They were placed in the Burke Catawba Detention Facility under a $10,000 secured bond each with a court appearance scheduled for today.

Fifteen Methamphetamine Traffickers were sentenced this week in U.S.District in Statesville. Among those sentenced by U.S.District Court Richard L.Voorhees, were 36-year-old William Mitchell Lee Pope of Connelly Springs, sentenced to 146 months, 25-year-old Codey Wayne Michaels of Valdese, sentenced to 120 months, 33-year-old Ryan Lewis Craig of Conover, sentenced to 83 months and 22-year-old Lindsey Jordan Price of Taylorsville, sentenced to 63 months. These prosecutions stem from an ongoing Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation led by ICE's Homeland Security Investigations and U.S.Bureau of ATF, with the assistance of the SBI and numerous WNC police and sheriff departments.