Witness Describes Dunwoody Pill Mill Raid

When the SUVs and police cars rolled into the Dunwoody Park office park on Wednesday afternoon, it wasn't a surprise for some of the office park's tenants.

One told Dunwoody Patch that the only surprise was that it'd taken so long before something was done. It seemed he'd seen more police cars in the office park in the last six months than he had in the entire 10 years that his company had been located there.

Dr. Nisar Piracha, a general surgeon who has been a practicing general surgeon for more than 30 years and located at Dunwoody Park location for less than a year, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with violation of Georgia's controlled substance act in connection to operating a pill mill. A nurse, Jennifer Pierce Washington, was also arrested.

The office park employee, who requested to remain unnamed, said several of Piracha's patients continued to pull up despite the abundance of police and DEA officers and vehicles on the scene Wednesday.

The patients who didn't speed away at the sight of law enforcement officers instead parked and walked towards the doctor's office and were stopped by officers, the witness explained.

Two of them, Ashley Dockery of North Carolina and Leo Slone of Kentucky were arrested. Dockery was charged with possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, and Slone was charged with driving on a suspended license and violating Georgia's controlled substance act.

The patients the witness observed daily would often drive up in older, "beat-up" cars with out-of-state license plates and park in a nearby parking lot before walking into Piracha's office. He said they would often arrive around 7 a.m. and sleep in their cars until Piracha's clinic opened at 8:30.

"We didn't really know them," he said of Piracha and his staff, explaining that he'd never been into Piracha's office except to drop off misdirected mail. "They were friendly."

Some of Piracha's patients arrived Thursday, unaware of Wednesday's raid.

One man, who "smelled horribly of alcohol," arrived to the clinic on Thursday morning and was shooed away by another employee of a neighboring office.

Now that the doctor and nurse have been arrested and charged, the witness said business will continue as usual for the other office park tenants.

"I don't like having someone promoting illegal activity," he said. "It's certainly changed his life, hasn't changed mine much."