A North Carolina Elections official appointed by the State resigned from his position on Thursday, authorities said, after he was arrested and accused of increasing the ice cream of his granddaughters with illicit narcotics.
James Edwin Yokeley Jr., 66, had been president of the Surry County Elections Board before presenting his renunciation letter.
“This decision has not been taken lightly,” Yakeley wrote to the Board. “After a lot of prayer, reflexive reflection and consultation, I have concluded that it is the best for the interest of the State Elections Board, with respect to my own circumstances falsely accused, to resign at this time.”
Yakeley had stopped at a Sheetz service station on August 8 and marked a police officer who was going to inform that “his two youthful granddaughters had found two hard objects in the ice cream in the ice cream that they had recently bought in Queen dairy” about 4 miles away, according to a statement by the Wilmington Police.
The girls did not consume the pills that were later tested and discovered that they were “illegal narcotics,” the police said.
The video images taken from that milk queen showed that it was Yokeley who “had been the one who placed the two pills in the ice cream of both victims,” said the police.
Yokeley was hired under suspicion of food contamination with a controlled substance and child abuse, the police said.
The messages that remain in the telephone numbers of the public list of the suspect, his family and his workplace were not immediately returned on Thursday.
In his letter, renouncing the Electoral Board, Yokeley said: “According to the truth and the facts, I still sure that I will exonerate all the level accusations against me.”
Yokeley was appointed member of the Board Elections of Surry County by state auditor Dave Boliek in June last year. Boliek could not be contacted immediately to comment on Thursday.
Yokeley had previously postulated a seat at the Surry County Education Board. It was a relatively competitive finalist of third place in the 2022 Republican primaries for the District 4 race, ending with 26.69% of the votes.
Throughout that local campaign, Yakeley focused on his complaints with national Covid policies and if the votes in the 2020 federal elections were properly counted, according to the winner of the race, TJ Bledsoe.
“I did not agree with some ways in which things were handled with masks and that kind of thing (during the pandemic), but it had already ended. We had advanced,” Bledsoe told NBC News on Thursday. “I think we were all confused (by Yokeley Covid and the voting approach in a local race).”
After falling short in that race, Yakeley continued to use the social networks of that campaign to advocate for anti -cachamic positions.
He cited the defense of children’s health, the nonprofit organization of the anti -vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on November 21, 2022, saying that “a wave of justice is fans against employers” that demands vaccination against Covid.
In a publication of December 7. 2022, Yokeley said that “Big Pharma” and the federal government were lying on the Covid vaccines that he affirms, without evidence, “have caused more adverse effects and deaths than all the previous combined vaccines.”
Studies have overwhelmingly demonstrated that Covid vaccines are safe and effective, and that most side effects are soft or moderate.
Lyles Toby and Aria Bendix contributed.
