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| Ms Pearson was raised in the streets beset by poverty and drug violence where The Wire was set |
The Wire's 'Snoop' arrested in Baltimore drug raid
An actor from the HBO television series The Wire has been charged with conspiring to sell heroin after being arrested in a drug raid targeting a Baltimore gang.
By Alex Spilius, Washington
4:58PM GMT 11 Mar 2011
Felicia Pearson, who used her real nickname "Snoop" for her role in the highly acclaimed series, was among 37 people detained in Operation Usual Suspects.
Local television showed FBI agents leading Pearson, 30, from a downtown apartment building to a waiting police van.
Frederick Bealefield, Baltimore's police commissioner, said: "The arrests make a section of the city safer and should be a reminder to other bad guys out on the streets of Baltimore that police are watching."
David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun crime reporter who created The Wire, issued an impassioned statement on Pearson's behalf.
"This young lady has, from her earliest moments, had one of the hardest lives imaginable," he wrote. "Her America is different from my own. I am ill-equipped to be her judge.
"Whatever good fortune that came from her role in The Wire seems, in retrospect, limited to that project.
"She worked hard as an actor and was entirely professional, but the entertainment industry as a whole does not offer a great many roles for those who can portray people from the other America."
Todd Hyatt, a lawyer for Pearson, said his client maintained she "had no involvement in this matter".
As an androgynous, scratchy-voiced assassin working for the fictitious Stanfield gang, Pearson played one of the programme's most memorable characters.
She was raised in the streets beset by poverty and drug violence where The Wire was set, graduating from the foster-care system to became involved in low-level drug dealing as a child.
At the age of 14, Pearson was convicted of second-degree murder - the equivalent of manslaughter - after killing another girl in a street fight. She served five years of an eight-year sentence and was released in 2000. She was discovered in a Baltimore nightclub in 2004 by Michael K Williams, who played The Wire's standout character Omar.
In 2008 she was charged with possessing marijuana, as police attempted to persuade her to testify in a murder trial. The charges against her were later dropped.
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