La Pine-area man arrested near Sisters; meth seized

Deschutes County sheriff’s deputies stopped and arrested a 66-year La Pine-area man on Highway 20 near Sisters early Tuesday and seized methamphetamine he’s accused of bringing back from the Willamette Valley to sell in the area.

Detectives with the sheriff’s office Street Crimes Unit developed information that James Leon Worden, who lives south of La Pine in northern Klamath County, was traveling back from the Willamette Valley with a “street-level shipment” of meth he planned to sell in Deschutes County, said Sgt. Deke DeMars.

With the assistance of the Central Oregon Drug Enforcement Team, deputies stopped Worden at 4 a.m. on Highway 20, DeMars said.

Worden had an amount of meth “consistent with amounts that would be delivered to smaller user-quantity dealers, along with packaging materials and digital scales,” the sergeant said in a news release.

Worden was taken to the Deschutes County Jail and held on $25,000 bail, charged with meth delivery, manufacture and possession.