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Thursday, August 18, 2005

Border Patrol Seizes Marijuana in Alamogordo


Associated Press
      ALAMOGORDO — U.S. Border Patrol agents have discovered more than two-thousand pounds of marijuana in a tractor-trailer that was bound for Michigan.
    Agents searched the trailer at a checkpoint on N.M. 54 south of Alamogordo and found 21 boxes containing 113 cellophane bundles of marijuana inside.
    The value is estimated at $1.7 million.
    Agents took the driver of the truck, 44-year-old Walter Gene Bruce of Tennessee, into custody on Wednesday.
    He was turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration in Las Cruces.
    This is the third drug seizure this week at a New Mexico highway traffic checkpoint.
    On Saturday, agents seized 10 pounds of cocaine at a checkpoint on N.M. 54 south of Alamogordo. The drugs, wrapped in four bundles worth $328,000, were found hidden in the dashboard of a sport utility vehicle.
    Agents arrested the driver, a 20-year-old man from Mexico, and turned him over to the Las Cruces DEA.
    On Sunday, agents at a checkpoint on U.S. 70 confiscated about 205 pounds of cocaine found in a semi truck that was transporting band equipment to Nashville, Tenn.
    Seventy bundles — worth an estimated $6.5 million — were found throughout the truck and trailer.
    A 35-year-old man from California and a 28-year-old Mexican man were arrested in connection with the seizure and turned over to the DEA in Las Cruces. Their names were not released.