‘Innocent people’ living at Sugar Creek hotel can stay after police, FBI drug raid
The Sugar Creek hotel raided by police and FBI agents on Wednesday wasn’t just an alleged place for drug sales, but a home to “innocent people,” including children, said Russ Ferguson, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.
Those people will be able to continue living at the Charlotte Garden Inn and Suites while the owner is taken to court as the feds try to take the property, Ferguson said at a news conference at CMPD’s uptown headquarters Wednesday afternoon.
The hotel “cannot be sold or transferred in any way,” Ferguson said. “This is a hotel, even if we ultimately seized it and auction it off, it’s most likely a hotel operator will buy it, so we don’t expect any interruption for the innocent victims.”
The hotel, located on Reagan Drive, is owned and operated by a woman named Jessica Woodard, according to Ferguson. An employee at the hotel said Woodard was not interested in speaking with The Charlotte Observer on Friday about the raid.
The hotel was raided by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police and FBI agents — some wearing green camoflauge and riding in military-style vehicles — after a six-month investigation revealed a drug dealing, Ferguson said. Ten people have been arrested in connection so far.
Ferguson did not say how many people live at the hotel, but it was a stark reminder that many people in Charlotte experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity live in them as an affordable housing option.
On Reagan Drive, a sign for the Garden Inn and Suites advertises “single weekly,” “low rates,” and “best value,” in capital letters.
City and county officials, as well as local nonprofits have used hotels as a way to provide housing to people experiencing homelessness. But conditions can vary.
Forest Point Place, a former hotel that was purchased by Mecklenburg County in December 2022 with $15 million from COVID-era American Rescue Plan Act funds, opened in 2025. The county said it would be used to house seniors and homeless people.
But in the case of the Lamplighter Inn in west Charlotte, a Charlotte Observer investigation in July 2024 found people lived in poor conditions until its closure at the end of the year. Many people living there were relocated after the Charlotte Fire Department condemned the hotel.
Students live at hotel
Police and FBI found themselves on standby Wednesday morning before conducting the joint operation because of a school bus picking up students, Ferguson said.
“I watched this morning as a school bus picked children up from the hotel,” he said at the Wednesday press conference. “They waited for the school bus to depart, for those children to safely get to school, before the operation started.”
There were 1,134 CMS students living in hotels between 2023 and 2024, according to housing data from Mecklenburg County.
Ferguson said he spoke to some of the people living at the hotel when police and FBI conducted the operation.
“But the hotel itself serves as almost like a farmer’s market for drugs and guns,” Ferguson said. “Multiple rooms, on multiple levels, of people buying guns and drugs, and those innocent people that are living there were duped.”
