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Surry County Elections chair resigns, charged with contaminating granddaughters' ice cream with narcotics

88.5 WFDD - Public Radio For The Piedmont | By Paul Garber
Published August 28, 2025 at 10:38 AM EDT
Image shows Surry County Elections Chair James Edwin Yokeley Jr.
Courtesy Wilmington Police Department
James Edwin Yokeley Jr.

Updated: August 28, 2025, 1:02 p.m.

Police in Wilmington arrested the chair of the Surry County Board of Elections this week, accusing him of putting narcotics in his granddaughters' ice cream.

Authorities say James Edwin Yokeley Jr. flagged down officers to tell them about two hard objects the young girls found in orders they had picked up from a Dairy Queen.

Two pills were collected and field tested. Investigators determined they were illegal narcotics.

Neither child had ingested any of the substance. Investigators looked at video footage and determined Yokeley had placed the pills in the ice cream.

Yokeley has been charged with contaminating food with a controlled substance and felony child abuse. He has since posted bond.

The Surry County Board of Elections released a statement saying that both state and local officials are aware of the charges and will continue to gather information to ensure the board is able to continue serving the county’s voters.

A press release from State Auditor Dave Boliek says Yokeley resigned as chair at 11:44 a.m.
Paul Garber
Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.
See stories by Paul Garber