OKLAHOMA CITY Former Oklahoma State basketball coach Sean Sutton has been arrested and accused of attempting to illegally obtain prescription painkillers from out of state.
Sutton was arrested Thursday night when he arrived to pick up a shipment of painkillers under another person s name, said Mark Woodward, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
Sutton was arrested on charges of attempting to possess a controlled dangerous substance and use of a communications device to facilitate a felony, Woodward said Friday.
A phone message left for Sutton was not immediately returned Friday. Formal charges had not yet been filed by the district attorney s office, and it was unclear whether Sutton had an attorney. His arrest was first reported by The Tulsa World.
Sutton seemed sober, seemed on the right track after receiving treatment last year, Woodward said, but authorities received tips in August that Sutton may have been visiting multiple doctors in an attempt to get additional prescription drugs.
We confronted him and he confessed that he was going to multiple doctors, and he agreed to go to treatment, Woodward said.
Sutton, however, did not keep in touch with authorities after he completed treatment and the bureau received information that he was pursuing drugs from New York and Washington state, Woodward said.Authorities said the package Sutton picked up contained about 40 pills, including the anti-anxiety drug clonazepam, two forms of the stimulant Adderall and an unidentified substance.
Sutton has not coached since resigning from the Cowboys under pressure in April 2008. He and his father, former Oklahoma State coach Eddie Sutton, attended the Kansas-Texas basketball game in Austin, Texas, on Monday and sat courtside at the Texas Tech-Oklahoma game the following night in Norman.
Sutton succeeded his father as coach of the Cowboys after he stepped down in May 2006 following a drunk driving crash. Eddie Sutton had been treated for alcohol addiction prior to his return to Oklahoma State, his alma mater, and had planned to set up an addiction awareness program at OSU that never materialized.
