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Councilman Barber turns self in on Belpre charge from 2012

Date set in Mayor’s Court

BELPRE — Parkersburg City Councilman Eric Barber turned himself in at the Belpre Police Department last week on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear on a 2012 charge of possession of marijuana.

Barber was released on a $125 bond and is scheduled to appear in Belpre Mayor’s Court on Nov. 7, according to the Belpre Police Department.

The first-term councilman said he did not realize there was a warrant for him in Belpre until it was reported in a July newspaper article about his arrest on misdemeanor charges of obstruction and disorderly conduct in Parkersburg.

“Had I been aware, I certainly would have (taken) care of that before I filed” to run for council in 2016, he said Thursday.

Belpre Police Chief Terry Williams said in July that the charge was not an offense for which the department would extradite someone. He said the department had reached out to Barber, most recently in mid-2016.

Barber said Thursday no one from the Belpre Police Department had contacted him. When he went to the department on Oct. 20, he said, he learned the phone number they had for him was outdated.

Williams did not return a message seeking a comment on Barber’s statement Thursday evening.

Barber said he remembers being cited in 2012 but thought he would have been notified about an outstanding warrant while he went through the process of having his driver’s license reinstated in 2016, following his conviction on a DUI charge in 2012. When it was not brought up, he said, he believed the case was closed.

Barber said he went to the Belpre Police Department Oct. 20 because “that was the first opportunity I had financially to go take care of it.”

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