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Woman accused of operating Tampa drug house appears before judge

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Published  April 1, 2025 4:57pm EDT
Hillsborough County
FOX 13 News

Suspected drug house raid nets 11 arrests

FOX 13's Ariel Plasencia explains the charges for a Tampa woman after a drug house raid. Plus what her defense said during Tuesday's court hearing.

The Brief

    • The woman accused of operating a Tampa drug house appeared before a judge on Tuesday.
    • She’s facing several charges, including possession of a controlled substance and keeping a public nuisance structure for drug activity.
    • The judge set bond at just over $100,000 on all charges for the 26-year-old.

TAMPA - The woman renting the Tampa house that was raided last week as part of a narcotics investigation by the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office went before a judge on Tuesday.

HCSO Deputy James Preto testified in court that Briella Johnson, 26, had been renting the home on Palm River Rd. near a 7-Eleven for about a year. 

The woman accused of operating a Tampa drug house appeared before a judge on Tuesday.

MORE: Video: 11 arrested after drug bust at Palm River home leads to seizure of drugs, guns and animals: HCSO

She’s facing several charges, including possession of a controlled substance and keeping a public nuisance structure for drug activity.

The backstory:

Last Thursday, deputies served a warrant on the property, which includes a single-family residence in the front and a garage apartment in the back.

11 people were arrested after a drug bust at a Palm River home led to the seizure of drugs, guns and animals, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

About a dozen people were on the property at the time of the raid, Preto told the judge. Eleven people, including Johnson, were arrested last week. 

Drugs, guns, and animals were seized from the property.

Body-cam video showed deputies shouting at people on the property and directing them to come out. At the same time, Preto said deputies saw Johnson on the second floor of the garage apartment, reportedly making several trips between a bedroom and the bathroom. Meanwhile, deputies simultaneously reported seeing drugs and a loaded gun falling from the building.

Courtesy: Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

"It actually fell from the walls of the apartment, yes," Preto said of the items.

Investigators later found a hole in the second-floor bathroom Johnson had reportedly been in, which is directly above where the items appeared to fall from.

"It was like somebody had like a hidden area there. The hole was covered with a picture," Preto said.

The state argued in court on Tuesday that Johnson was discarding the drugs and the gun, later discovered to be stolen, through this hole.

"That's why she was doing it, and it happened simultaneously," state attorneys argued. "It's not circumstantial, it's what happened."

The other side:

But the defense disagreed.

"(It’s) very, very circumstantial," Johnson’s attorney said. "The state’s case is asking for a lot of inferences to be made in order to connect the weapon and the substances to my client, Ms. Johnson."

At the end of the hearing, the judge ruled that the state did not prove Johnson had actual physical possession of a weapon during a crime. 

Therefore, legal statutes requiring pre-trial detention were not met, so the judge set bond at just over $100,000 on all charges for the 26-year-old.

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The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13's Ariel Plasencia.

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