Hilton told cops purse with drugs wasn’t hers

Associated Press

LAS VEGAS

Paris Hilton denied owning the purse in which police say less than a gram of cocaine was found after a traffic stop on the Las Vegas Strip, according to an arrest report released Monday.

“She told me the purse was not hers, that she had borrowed it from a friend,” Las Vegas police Lt. Dennis Flynn wrote in his report of Hilton’s arrest shortly before midnight Friday. The friend was not identified.

The 29-year-old celebrity socialite acknowledged owning $1,300 in cash, several credit cards, a package of Zig-Zag rolling papers and a broken tablet of the prescription asthma medication Albuterol also found in the purse late Friday during her arrest at the Wynn Las Vegas resort.

Flynn said Hilton had asked to be allowed to go into the hotel after her boyfriend, 34-year-old Las Vegas nightclub mogul Cy Waits, failed field sobriety tests given by a motorcycle officer who stopped them in a black Cadillac Escalade that Flynn said smelled of marijuana smoke.

Flynn said Hilton denied owning a small plastic “bindle” containing 0.8 grams of cocaine powder that the police lieutenant said fell out when Hilton opened the purse to get a tube of lip balm.

“Hilton admitted the Albuterol ... was hers and is prescribed to her, but the suspected cocaine was not,” Flynn wrote. “I asked Hilton whose cocaine it was, and she said she had not seen it but now thought it was gum.”

Hilton faces a charge of felony possession of cocaine that could get her probation if convicted. A violation of that probation could be punishable by up to one to four years in prison. Hilton was freed before dawn Saturday after spending less than three hours on a bench at the Clark County jail. Waits, 34, spent the night in jail before he was released on $2,000 bail. He faces a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence.

Flynn said that while Hilton was in the Escalade, she asked to go inside the Wynn resort to use a bathroom.

Flynn said Hilton was taken to a security holding room inside Wynn to await the arrival of a female officer to accompany her to a restroom.

“Hilton said she needed to put some lip balm on, and I handed her the purse from the table,” the police lieutenant wrote. “As she began to open it, I saw a small bindle of what I believed to be cocaine in clear plastic baggy begin to fall from the purse and into my hand.”