It was just last week Chief Justice Michael Kruse commented that the court has had cases of items being smuggled into the TCF — inside socks and shoes and also inside vials hidden in a cake.

Yesterday, the Attorney General’s office charged a woman similarly, alleging that she attempted to smuggle methamphetamine — that was stored in cut up straws and hidden inside a bar of soap — into the jail for her husband, Samuel Wright, who was arrested for his role in the armed robbery of the Faga’alu Gold Conda store.

The wife, Sila Tui is held behind bars on bail of $10,000 and is charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance, marijuana and unlawful possession of a controlled substance, methamphetamine, with intent to distribute.

According to the government’s case, last week the Central Police Station received  information that Correction officers came across what appeared to be methamphetamine in one of the packages dropped off for an inmate. The detectives with the Vice and Narcotics Unit were then contacted and head of Vice and Narc, Captain Muagututi’a John Cendrowski investigated this matter.

At the Tafuna Correctional Facility (TCF) the officers informed the detectives that they found what appeared to be ‘meth’ in a soap package of irish Spring and a fluid lighter inside a Colgate package while searching the package which had been dropped off by a female who is the wife of inmate Samuel Wright.

The Correction officers told the investigators that the defendant left the jail while they were searching through the package she dropped off. Police found two cut up straws with both sides sealed containing a crystalline substance. Court filings say they went to defendant’s residence in Faga’alu but she was not there. Police contacted her and she agreed that she would go to the Central Police Station, which she did. It’s alleged that defendant arrived at the police station with her two children.

She told police that she went to the jail to pick up her husband’s laundry and then she went to Tafeta to take her kids for a Samoan fofo when her husband called her from jail to pick a package from his friend. Court filings say the woman got off the bus with her kids in Faleniu and waited for her husband’s friend. She said the unknown friend came by and dropped off her husband’s stuff, then she got back on the bus and went to the TCF with the package.

Police questioned the woman if she had any knowledge that there was ice in the package she was picking up,  and allegedly, she said yes.

“Sam called her on her cell phone and told her there was Ice inside the soap,” court filings said. Defendant said she told Wright that she was scared to drop off the package at the TCF but her husband told her not to worry, the police would not find out.

The crystalline substance was tested using a reagent field test and yielded positive for methamphetamine. If convicted on the two criminal charges, the mother of two is looking at 25 years in jail.

Tui will be arraigned in High Court tomorrow, after she waived her rights to a preliminary examination in the District Court yesterday morning. She’s represented by the Public Defender’s office while prosecuting is Assistant Attorney General Tiffany Oldfield.