An arrest warrant being issued for a New Boston man who failed to appear in Mercer County Circuit Court this week for a pre-trial conference in a 2020 meth case.
56-year-old Lester Ward faces a Class X felony meth count stemming from a January of 2020 arrest when Mercer County Sheriff’s Deputies, Quad Cities MEG agents, and Illinois State Police executed a search warrant at his residence. Bond was set at $400,000 in that case, but he posted ten percent and was released in the summer of 2020.
Ward was arrested again in September of 2022 on a Muscatine County warrant after Mercer County Sheriff’s Deputies conducted a motorist assist north of Swedtown Road near New Boston. In May of 2022, he was arrested for DUI and resisting a peace officer in Mercer County.