Suspected Ogden fentanyl dealer arrested after 2 police pursuits
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OGDEN — A woman who was wanted on drug-dealing charges has been arrested after twice eluding officers in pursuits, one time allegedly trying to run down officers.
Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force agents reported in an arrest affidavit that they apprehended Morgan Raquel Valdez, 32, of Ogden, on Saturday, tracking her down after she allegedly got away from pursuers in incidents on Dec. 22 and 28.
In the first incident, a narcotics agent spotted Valdez in a car near 30th Street and Reeves Avenue and attempted to pull her over — there were two active warrants for her arrest. She made a U-turn and sped east, running two stop signs and passing cars in the median, then ran a red light at Washington Boulevard, according to charging documents. Due to heavy traffic, Valdez got away, police said.
On Dec. 28, agents saw Valdez in an SUV that pulled behind a gas station at 30th Street and Monroe Boulevard. Agents in several police cars pulled in to block off the SUV, but Valdez allegedly accelerated back and forth, crashing into the police vehicles and pushing one car far enough aside to get away, according to an arrest affidavit.
During the arrest attempt, Valdez allegedly grazed one officer who was on foot and almost ran over two others, who were able to jump out of the way. The woman’s SUV scraped between one police car and a wall to get out of the parking lot, the affidavit said.
Valdez was ordered held without bail in the Weber County Jail on four counts of second-degree felony assault on a peace officer with a dangerous weapon, two third-degree felony charges of failure to stop for police and a third-degree felony charge of possession of narcotics at the jail, where she allegedly had fentanyl and drug paraphernalia when she was booked.
Police had been pursuing Valdez on arrest warrants related to previous felony cases. The most recent was a case that started in April 2022 when the U.S. Postal Service alerted Ogden police to a suspicious package sent to Valdez’s Ogden address from California.
The package contained 1,000 fentanyl pills, and charging documents said police learned through analysis of Valdez’s text message history that the pills came from an illegal narcotics supplier in Mexico.