A slow-speed chase through a Walmart parking lot ended with a Cantonment, Florida man facing methamphetamine trafficking charges after deputies say he tried to shed evidence from his truck window while refusing to pull over.
Charlie Clifford Davis, 55, was arrested after an Escambia County Sheriff’s Office deputy spotted his white pickup truck crossing the center line multiple times and stopping improperly at the intersection of West Nine Mile Road and Pensacola Boulevard. When the deputy activated emergency lights and a siren, Davis did not stop. Instead, according to the arrest report, he slowed down and continued driving north into the parking lot of a nearby Walmart at 8970 Pensacola Boulevard.
The intersection where the encounter began sits along one of the busier commercial corridors in Pensacola’s northern suburbs, where Nine Mile Road traffic funnels into the Boulevard’s retail strip. Deputies working that corridor see their share of impaired and suspended drivers, but the arrest report describes an unusual sequence: a driver who would not stop for lights and siren yet never attempted to flee at speed.
During the pursuit, which authorities described as taking place at a slow speed within the confines of the parking lot, the deputy reported seeing Davis reaching frantically around the passenger seat, causing the truck to swerve and jerk with its passenger window rolled down. The movements, captured from the pursuing patrol vehicle, would become central to the evidence case: everything deputies later found scattered through the cab was consistent with someone emptying pockets and bags onto the passenger side while rolling slowly across a parking lot.
Davis eventually made an abrupt U-turn inside the Walmart lot before pulling into an adjacent Murphy USA gas station, where he finally brought the truck to a stop. Even after stopping, deputies say Davis kept reaching into the passenger area of the cab before he got out and surrendered without further incident.
What deputies found
A K-9 unit that responded to the scene indicated probable cause to search the truck. What deputies found inside and around the vehicle painted a picture of an attempt to ditch drugs during the slow pursuit, with the distribution of the evidence tracing the path of the chase itself.
Officers recovered 17.9 grams of a crystalline substance scattered throughout the interior of the cab, with a heavy concentration coating the passenger door panel next to the open window where Davis had reportedly been reaching. Another 4 grams of the same substance turned up on the pavement near the Murphy USA entrance, close to where Davis made his U-turn. A clear plastic bag holding 12.8 grams of marijuana was also found discarded in a bush next to where the truck came to rest.
The white crystalline material field-tested positive for methamphetamine, bringing the total recovered to 21.9 grams. The total matters under Florida law: the state’s trafficking statute draws its line at 14 grams, and the quantity seized — combining what was found in the cab with what had already been tossed or spilled along the way — placed the case squarely in trafficking territory rather than simple possession.
Deputies documented each location where material was found, and the geography of the evidence became part of the narrative in the arrest report: a trail from the Walmart lot’s center to the gas station pump islands, matching the deputy’s account of what he watched through the windshield during the pursuit.
The statements and the charges
When deputies questioned Davis, he admitted to smoking marijuana but denied the bag found in the bush belonged to him. He also denied any current involvement with methamphetamine, telling deputies he was “clean” and no longer used the drug, according to the arrest report.
Those statements, recorded alongside the physical evidence, present the tension a defense will have to resolve: a driver who said he no longer used methamphetamine, stopped at the end of a chase with nearly 22 grams of it distributed through his truck and the lot around it. Possession, under Florida law, extends to items found within a person’s control, and the quantity recovered makes the trafficking charge independent of any question of personal use.
Davis was charged with trafficking methamphetamine in an amount of 14 grams or more, tampering with evidence in a criminal proceeding, possession of marijuana, and driving with a suspended or revoked license, a charge listed as his third or subsequent offense. He was booked into the Escambia County Jail and later released on a $108,500 bond.
The tampering count stems directly from the conduct deputies say they observed — discarding and scattering controlled substances during the stop, in view of the pursuing patrol unit. Evidence-tampering charges are frequently paired with trafficking cases where the quantity can be reconstructed, since the discarded material remains attributable to the defendant when deputies can tie each piece to the observed sequence of the chase.
A long driving record
A records check by investigators turned up a lengthy history of driving violations tied to Davis, including 10 prior convictions for driving on a suspended license. His license has been revoked since 1994, and his most recent suspension stemmed from a fleeing and eluding conviction in November 2024, meaning Tuesday’s incident was not the first time Davis has been accused of failing to stop for law enforcement.
That history shapes how the new case will be handled. A defendant with 10 prior convictions on the same offense faces escalating penalties under Florida’s sentencing framework, and the prior fleeing-and-eluding conviction from late 2024 gives prosecutors a recent example of the same refusal-to-stop behavior the Walmart lot pursuit featured.
For the deputy who initiated the stop, the arrest closed an ordinary traffic observation that turned into a felony case — the kind of escalation deputies in northwest Florida’s growing suburban corridors encounter with regularity as Nine Mile Road and its surrounding retail centers absorb the region’s continued population growth.
What the trafficking charge means
Methamphetamine trafficking charges in Florida carry significant mandatory minimum sentences once the threshold weight is met. The statute is graduated: quantities above 14 grams trigger mandatory prison terms, with longer minimums at 28 grams and 200 grams. At 21.9 grams recovered, Davis’s case sits in the lowest trafficking bracket — but that bracket alone carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence that a simple possession conviction would not.
The trafficking threshold’s design reflects the Legislature’s intent to distinguish dealers from users. Quantities measured in grams, rather than doses, are treated as evidence of distribution, and prosecutors do not need to prove a sale occurred — possession above the threshold weight is the offense. That makes the weighing scale, not witness testimony, the pivotal witness in cases like this one.
Prosecutors in cases involving amounts near the 14-gram trafficking threshold often look closely at surrounding circumstances, including any attempt to destroy or discard evidence during an arrest, which can support additional tampering charges of the kind Davis now faces. The discarded methamphetamine on the pavement and the marijuana in the bush are therefore both evidence of the underlying offenses and potential evidence of a knowing attempt to conceal — the two facts that elevate a drug case into one with exposure measured in mandatory years rather than probation.
The marijuana count, by contrast, is a straightforward possession charge tied to the 12.8 grams found in the bush, and the driving charge — third or subsequent offense of driving while revoked — carries its own jail exposure under the repeat-offender provisions. Together, the four counts give prosecutors layered options at the negotiating table.
The case ahead
The case remains under investigation, and it was not immediately clear when Davis is scheduled to make his first court appearance on the new charges. Arraignment would follow the formal filing of the charges by the State Attorney’s Office for the First Judicial Circuit, which covers Escambia County.
The drug testing ahead of trial will also matter. Field tests are presumptive, and laboratory confirmation of the 21.9 grams’ composition and net weight is standard before a trafficking case proceeds; defense counsel routinely challenge the lab’s weighing method, since hundredths of a gram near a statutory threshold can move the case between offense levels with very different consequences.
Beyond the criminal counts, Davis’s November 2024 fleeing-and-eluding conviction means any new conviction for failure to stop — or for the conduct alleged in the parking lot — falls within a documented pattern that repeat-offender enhancements are written to address. How prosecutors elect to charge and sequence the counts will determine the practical range of outcomes when the case reaches disposition.
For now, the evidence recovered across a Walmart parking lot and a gas station forecourt — 17.9 grams in the cab, 4 grams on the pavement, 12.8 grams of marijuana in a bush — stands as the physical record of a slow-speed chase that lasted only a few hundred yards but produced a felony case likely to occupy the Escambia County courts for months.