Note to wannabe pot smugglers: if you're going to stash bundles of weed inside your car tires, don't pull over at an immigration checkpoint complaining of a flat tire and ask authorities for help.
According to a hilarious article in yesterday's San Clemente Patch by Adam Townsend–he's the guy who first broke the story about deputies just missing a Nissan being loaded with marijuana bales at 1 a.m.–one 24-year-old woman apparently didn't get this memo.
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The woman, a U.S. citizen, was driving through the Border Patrol's checkpoint on Interstate 5 at about 11:30 a.m. on June 19. According to la migra, she had a flat tire and asked for to help. But as she pulled over, the agency's press release states, “agents noticed something banging around inside the tire. Agents brought out a drug dog, which indicated the presence of drugs.”
Turns out the woman had 141 pounds of pot stashed inside steel cases that were “wrapped around the wheels.” The agents handed the car, the weed, and the inept smuggler over to the DEA. The total haul was valued at $211,485. Check out the Patch article for a slideshow of the ingenious smuggling technique, foiled only by bad luck and human stupidity. You can fully expect the woman's lawyer to argue that someone planted the drugs in her car. After all, who in their right mind would ask cops for helping changing a flat tire full of weed?
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Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).