Rock Hill business owner sentenced for using maid service to sell drugs

ROCK HILL, S.C. — The co-owner of a Rock Hill maid service is going to spend the next six years in prison after officials said she used her business to sell drugs.

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According to officials, Donna Stevenson, 56, was the mastermind behind the operation and pleaded guilty to multiple drug charges.

Her husband Virgil Stevenson, 60, and employee Robert Maynard, 36, were also charged in connection to the crimes.

Last November, police seized drugs and firearms during a raid at a Ready-Maid cleaning service location.

Channel 9 was told that federal, state and local police raided the business on Lesslie Highway and seized methamphetamine, painkillers and guns.

Officials said the business owners faced multiple drug charges, including drug trafficking, and Maynard was charged with drug possession.

Firefighters, from the Lesslie Volunteer Fire Department next door, told Channel 9 they started noticing traffic around the business at very late hours and grew suspicious.

Drug agents began making undercover drug buys and raided the business, along with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and deputies from Lancaster County.  They seized more than a hundred pills, such as Xanax, oxycodone and hydrocodone, along with meth and four handguns.

"The owners of the business are the ones selling the drugs, and at least one of their employees was delivering drugs for them," said Marvin Brown, head of the York County Multi-jurisdictional Drug Enforcement Unit.

Ready-Maids employees did not answer the door or return phone calls from Channel 9.

Some neighbors said they were shocked to hear about the raid and the drugs.

"it's scary knowing that something like that was happening right next door," neighbor Pam Lovell said. "Makes you wonder what else they were up to."

Brown said the meth the Stevensons are accused of selling was "Ice,"  a highly potent smokeable form of the drug that they are seeing more and more frequently.

Just a few years ago, local drug agents saw the number of meth labs they discovered grow from five to 10 to more than 20 in a single year.

Now most drug dealers have abandoned the highly dangerous powder form of meth, for "Ice," which gives a faster high, drug agents said.

"We don't see meth labs anymore," Brown said.  "Most of this stuff is made in other places and sold here."

Cox Media Group