A Cedar Park man was slapped with a slew of charges after cops say they caught him with an arsenal of weapons and a smorgasbord of illegal drugs. Joshua Harty-Smith now faces the music following an alleged assault at a local apartment complex last month.
According to a CBS Austin report, the Cedar Park Police Department responded to a distress call on April 26 from a man who claimed he'd been pistol-whipped at The Lodge at Lakeline Apartments. Despite their efforts, officers could find neither the victim nor the alleged assaulter on the scene, prompting a hand-off to the Major Crimes Unit for deeper digging.
The breakthrough came when detectives laid their hands on surveillance footage that seemed to support the victim’s claims. Harty-Smith can be apparently seen bashing the victim with a gun, then attempting to fire twice – only to be thwarted by a faulty firearm. This critical lead resulted in a search warrant that brought the Central Texas Regional SWAT Team to Harty-Smith's doorstep on May 3.
Inside Harty-Smith's home, law enforcement unearthed a veritable cache of contraband and firearms. According to the Cedar Park Police's Facebook post, the horde included a revolver, a stolen .45 Springfield handgun allegedly used in an assault, a shotgun, and a .223 rifle. The trove didn't stop at weaponry; officers also found copious amounts of heroin, cocaine, mushrooms, MDMA, THC, and weed, accompanied by a handsome sum of $14,688 in cash.
For Harty-Smith, the long arm of the law didn't just bring weapons and drug trafficking charges; it also clamped down on him for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon and violation of parole. With the evidence stacked against him, the case adds another piece to an ever-convoluted puzzle of crime and punishment in Cedar Park.
