PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — A woman was found dead around 10 a.m. Monday morning, wrapped in a sheet with a cardboard box on top of her on the ground in an alleyway south of 3564 52nd Avenue North in St. Pete.
Deputies determined that the 30-year-old woman died at the Gateway Motel, located at 4990 34th Street North, from a drug overdose, a few blocks away from the alley.
While at the motel, a maintenance man, identified as 56-year-old John Stuart Yeckley, invited her to his room around midnight, where she injected fentanyl into her arm, and provided the man with crack cocaine.
Yeckley woke up around 5 a.m. and saw the woman was dead on the floor in the room. He then went outside and recruited 42-year-old Michael Allen Sloan, who was wandering around the motel without a room, to get rid of her body.
Yeckley and Sloan wrapped her in a sheet, put her on the back of Sloan’s bike, and dumped her body in the alley. In a video released by the sheriff’s office, the men are seen stopping the bike to put up her legs, which kept falling off.
The two suspects also said they put her in that alley because a lot of people are around that area and assumed she would be found, according to the Sheriff.
Deputies said the woman had an extensive criminal history and was severely addicted to drugs. They said she was an unemployed transient with no local address.
An autopsy and further investigation revealed the woman died from a drug overdose. An imprint on her leg, along with the motel-like sheets matched the motel description, which aided them in the investigation.
On Jan. 6, deputies said the woman was dropped off to get drugs in the 800 block of 12th Avenue South in St. Pete.
On Christmas Day in 2023, Nov. 3, 2023, and June 16, 2022, Sloan overdosed on drugs at the Gateway Motel and was saved by Narcan administered by deputies all three times.
“People need to know that there is help out there,” Sheriff Gualtieri said in the press conference. “We need to be more effective with case management and driving these people into treatment and in the right direction.”
The Sheriff said Yeckley and Sloan were both arrested and charged with tampering with physical evidence. They are being held in the Pinellas County Jail.