Mathews County Sheriff’s Office Acting Major April Edwards received a 2023 Public Service Award last Wednesday, Sept. 6, from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Newport News, for work she did on the case “United States v. Eric Lee Smith” while serving as the MCSO investigator.
Also receiving the award was Anthony Newton, the resident agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who worked on the case with Edwards.
According to the document describing the award, which was issued by the office of U.S. Attorney Jessica D. Aber, the case involved a methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy that Smith engaged in during 2019 and 2020 in Gloucester County and surrounding areas.
Smith was known to carry firearms and use them “in furtherance of his drug trafficking crimes,” said the document, and after shooting another individual with a machine gun (a crime that occurred on Chapel Neck Road in Mathews in November 2020), Smith was found o...