A refusal to pay a toll at an Indiana plaza snowballed into a night in jail and four criminal charges. Indiana State Police say a semi driver wouldn’t pay at the Portage Barrier Toll Plaza, and things went downhill from there. By the end of it, troopers say they’d found suspected marijuana and a bottle of fake urine in her truck. The driver, 38-year-old Shalaia Martin, was arrested and charged. None of the charges have been proven in court.
According to state police, it started just before 11 p.m. Tuesday. A trooper was called out after a report of a semi driver who wouldn’t pay her toll. He tried to get her information so the toll could simply be settled later. Instead, police say, she gave him false information.
That’s what turned a toll dispute into an arrest. Troopers moved to take Martin into custody for the false information, and police say she resisted. The trooper had to call for backup before she was in custody. A search of the semi then turned up the suspected marijuana and the bottle of fake urine.
Martin was booked into the Porter County Jail. She faces four charges, false informing, resisting law enforcement, possession of synthetic urine, and possession of marijuana. All of them are accusations for now, and she’s presumed innocent. The chain of events, and one charge in particular, are worth unpacking.
How a Toll Dispute Turned Into Four Charges
On its own, not paying a toll is a minor problem. Troopers deal with it routinely, and the usual fix is just to log the driver’s information and collect the toll later. That’s what the trooper here was trying to do. The situation escalated, police say, only because of what happened next, starting with the false information.
Each step added a charge. Giving false information to an officer is a crime in Indiana, known as false informing. Fighting the resulting arrest added resisting law enforcement, which is why a second officer had to be called. Then the search of the truck brought two more counts, one for the suspected marijuana and one for the fake urine. A stop that could have ended with a paid toll instead ended with a booking photo.
Why Fake Urine Is Its Own Crime in Indiana
The fake urine charge is the one that catches the eye, and it’s a real law. Indiana specifically makes it a crime to possess synthetic urine, the type sold to beat a drug test. The idea behind the product is simple. Someone facing a urine screening uses a fake sample to hide drug use. Lawmakers decided that possessing it for that purpose is worth its own offense.
The context makes the charge a little less random than it sounds. Commercial truck drivers face strict federal drug testing, so a bottle of synthetic urine in a semi raises obvious questions. To be clear, the charge is only about possessing the product. Police haven’t alleged she used it or beat any test. Like the other counts, it’s an accusation a court will weigh, and a driver who balked at a toll is now facing a lot more than a toll.