2 DEPUTIES IMPROVING

Illness Cause Still Baffling

Two Saline County deputies hospitalized after apparently coming into
contact with an unknown substance during a Friday drug arrest were released
from a hospital Tuesday afternoon but are still too sick to return to work.

Sheriff Phil Mask said deputies Kevin Nason and Lee Lobbs would undergo
further medical tests before being cleared to return to duty.

"I told them to go home," Mask said. "They're still tired, but they felt
well enough to be released from the hospital."

The sheriff said chemical tests on a substance found in a plastic bag
during a Friday night arrest revealed the presence of crystal
methamphetamine and a substance that has not been identified.

"The state Crime Lab has worked diligently on this, and they said it [the
unknown substance] is not potassium chloride," the sheriff said.

Lt. Jim Andrews, head of the sheriff's criminal investigation division,
said experts, including those at the state Crime Laboratory and the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, have yet to determine what
caused the illness, which initially appeared to be a heart attack.

Nason and Lobbs got sick while arresting Randolph Schilling, 50, after a
traffic stop near Shannon Hills. Schilling, an associate professor of
mathematics at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, was arrested on
charges of refusing to take a sobriety test and possession of a controlled
substance with intent to deliver. He was released Monday after posting
$2,500 bail.

Jeff Yllander, agent in charge of the Little Rock office of the federal
Drug Enforcement Agency, said he has offered his department's assistance in
the case, adding, "I've got a call in to the sheriff to see what we can do."

Lobbs and Nason were taken to Southwest Regional Medical Center in Little
Rock on Friday after they began throwing up and convulsing. They were
released Saturday but were readmitted to the hospital Sunday afternoon when
symptoms persisted.

Mask said investigators searched Schilling's home and found nothing to help
explain the officers' conditions.

"I'm going to send them to the department's doctor before they are put back
on duty," the sheriff said. "Right now, there's just no knowing what caused
this."