WARREN (WWJ) - Former Michigan State basketball player Keith Appling has been arrested on drug charges.
According to reports, Appling was charged with possessing 19 grams of heroin in his vehicle following a traffic stop last weekend in Warren, arraigned Wednesday, and released on a $30,000 bond.
Appling, 28, was stopped for improper lane use while driving a Dodge Challenger on Dequindre Rd. just north of 8 Mile Road just before 5 p.m. Feb. 8, according to Assistant Macomb County Prosecutor Derek Miller, speaking to the Macomb Daily. An inventory search of the car revealed a “golf ball sized” amount of heroin in a sandwich bag that was “tucked in the storage pocket” behind the passenger-side seat, Miller told the newspaper.
While Warren Police Commissioner Bill Dywer confirmed the arrest to WWJ Newsradio 950, he decline to comment on the case on Friday.
This is not the first time Appling, of Detroit, has found himself in trouble with the law.
In August of 2016, Appling was pulled over by police at Russell and E. 7 Mile in Detroit. After initially stopping, police say he fled and tossed a handgun out the window of his 2013 Dodge Challenger.
In 2017, he was sentenced to one year in jail and probation after pleading guilty to a weapons charge and resisting arrest. He had been facing up to eight other charges from traffic stops in Detroit and Dearborn -- outside a strip club in Michigan Ave. -- but under the plea agreement, those charges were dropped.
Appling played for Michigan State from 2010-2014, and after that played for two years in the NBA’s development league.