Lycoming County Prison inmate Shawn Thomas Oliver, already incarcerated on felony drug charges, faces an additional offense of possession of a facsimile of a weapon of mass destruction after law enforcement officers came upon what looked very much like a pipe bomb while executing a search warrant inside his Wolf Township mobile home on March 6, according to an amended affidavit.

Referring to the pipebomb, the 32-year-old Oliver said “I made that, and then my friend and I blew them up in the creek,” he told members of the county’s Narcotics Enforcement Unit who came to his residence at 152 Boak Ave., lot 72, just outside Hughesville, with the warrant.

An FBI bomb squad was needed to disable the device, which turned out to be a fake, it was stated in the court document. Thirteen firearms and an estimated 1.500 bags of fentanyl were found and seized, resulting in the immediate arrest and incarceration of Oliver’s roommate, Sara Lynn Hittinger, a 45-year-old convicted felon who was charged with felony firearms and drug offenses. Oliver was arrested and jailed four days later on identical drug charges.

At her recent preliminary hearing before District Judge Kirsten Gardner, Hittinger was held for court on the original charges along with conspiracy to possession with intent to deliver fentanyl and methamphetamine, offenses that were added to the original complaint. The lead detective in the case also amended the number of seized fentanyl bags, increasing the amount from 1,500 to 2,000 bags.

Besides the felony charge related to the fake pipebomb, detectives also added the two conspiracy drug charges to Olver’s complaint at his scheduled preliminary hearing, which he waived last week. Both he and Hittinger remain locked up in lieu of $150,000 bail each.