POTTED FLORIDA PROSECUTOR SQUAD

Cocaine of State Attorney's prosecutor was hidden in rubber ducky and pot was used at bachelorette party

By Rene Stutzman

Orlando Sentinel
February 2, 2017

They were the “Squad,” a group of 20-something friends and co-workers at the State Attorney’s Office in Orlando who went to a bachelorette party in New Orleans, where someone brought a rubber ducky filled with cocaine.

Shannon Solo, a 27-year-old victim advocate, was the bride-to-be.

She did a lot of cocaine that weekend, she would later tell a new boyfriend, according to investigative documents.

He was an Orange County deputy and drug agent, who passed word up the chain of command. As a result Solo and four other members of the Squad were fired.

Also fired was a sixth person, attorney Danielle Wall, who was later accused of smoking marijuana at a house in Kissimmee.

Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced those dismissals Jan. 20, saying an internal investigation determined that all six women either used drugs or saw co-workers use them and condoned it.

“Based on the power and authority employees of this office possess, I hold each of us to a higher standard,” she said. “They were people who should not be working for the State Attorney’s Office.”

This week, her office released paperwork from an internal investigation.

It shows that two members of the Squad – Solo and attorney Alicia Virginio – admitted they abused drugs at the bachelorette party. Solo snorted cocaine and used Adderall, a stimulant typically prescribed to treat attention deficit disorder, she admitted.

Virginio contributed money to buy marijuana and told investigators, “I probably did take a puff.”

In a separate series of events at a house in Kissimmee, they and a third person who was not part of the Squad – Wall – admitted smoking marijuana in December.

Another victim advocate and member of the Squad, Casey Perkins, did not go to New Orleans but said she saw Solo and Virginio smoke marijuana at the house in Kissimmee in a bong made out of a Gatorade bottle.

Two other members of the Squad – victim advocates Rachel Shaw and Barbara “Kathleen” Browne – admitted seeing drug use at the bachelorette party.

Solo, Virginio, Wall and Browne did not respond to phone calls or messages sent via social media. Perkins would not comment, and Shaw could not be reached.

The women who did not use drugs – Shaw, Browne and Perkins – were fired for insubordination and for not being fully forthcoming.

They appealed, according to office spokeswoman Eryka Washington, but Ayala did not change her mind.

The 194-page investigative file makes clear that the party in New Orleans was a wild one.

The four women from Orlando, plus other friends, rented a house.

“There was a lot of drinking and dancing going on,” Virginio told investigators.

There also was cocaine, hidden in a rubber ducky, and marijuana, the now-fired employees said.

Shaw told investigators that she saw people, including Solo, snort cocaine through rolled-up dollar bills.

Someone made a bong out of a water bottle, Browne told investigators, and the house smelled like marijuana.

The report doesn’t spell out the date of the party, but Solo’s work calendar, and those of the other women from the Orlando office who attended, show they all took vacation days Sept. 9-12.

Ayala said the women would not be prosecuted because of a lack of evidence.

Lt. Ryan Berry, a spokesman for the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, said his agency had not investigated possible marijuana use there. Unless officers found the women in possession of marijuana, he said, the case would not hold up in court.

Kissimmee Police Department spokeswoman Stacie Miller said her agency was not investigating.

Ron Stucker is director of the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation, the drug and vice agency where Solo’s new boyfriend works. He said his agency did not investigate, in part, because it doesn’t handle misdemeanors. Possession of a small amount of marijuana is a misdemeanor in Florida.

Recreational marijuana use is legal in California, Colorado and six other states. It is illegal in Louisiana.

After the women got home from the bachelorette party, Solo’s fiance dumped her, in part, because of drug use, her new and now-ex-boyfriend told investigators.