Face drug and endangering counts

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A Mahoning County grand jury has indicted a Struthers couple who police say was living in a home overrun by snakes.

Joseph McCollum, 46, and Michelle M. Barrett, 45, both of Fifth Street, were each indicted Thursday on charges of possession of cocaine and endangering children.

They are expected to be arraigned next week before Judge Maureen Sweeney in common pleas court.

Police searched their home Oct. 11 while doing a welfare check on McCollum and found a large quantity of snakes, many of them poisonous, in every room of the house.

Rats and mice also were found in the home, to be food for the snakes, where Barrett’s 12-year-old son also lived, which led to the child-endangering charge.

The indictment said they both created a substantial risk to the health or safety of the child in the home.

Police also found drug paraphernalia at the home, and the grand jury said the couple had drugs there on Oct. 8, which led to the possession-of-cocaine charge.

The couple were running an online snake store out of the home, but Struthers has an ordinance against having exotic animals. The snakes were taken away by animal-control officers.

Police did the welfare check after McCollum went to St. Elizabeth Health Center a couple of days before the home was searched because he got bit by one of the snakes, but he left before he could be treated by hospital staff, police said.