(IntegrityPress.org) – Oregon law enforcement made a surprise discovery during a traffic stop, arresting a man for transporting a load of drugs worth over $2.6 million.
On Friday, June 28, officers of the California Highway Patrol (CHP) arrested 36-year-old Isaac Abraham Sandoval Lopez in Merced County after discovering hundreds of pounds of narcotics in his vehicle during a traffic stop.
A CHP officer conducted the traffic stop around 4 PM after his police K-9 identified the 2013 Hyundai Elantra as suspicious. Lopez, who is from Portland, Oregon, was northbound on Interstate 5 and was stopped near Nees Avenue for a traffic violation in nearby Fresno County.
After identifying Lopez as the driver and discovering he didn’t have a driver’s license, police searched the car and found a plastic bag on the floor of the passenger seat, as well as a backpack, two suitcases, and three packages with an unidentified substance in the trunk. Inside Lopez’s vehicle, police found a total of 2 pounds of heroin, 5 of fentanyl, and around 262 pounds of methamphetamine. The entire cargo in street value would bring approximately $2,669,520.
The suspect was arrested on suspicion of possession of illegal narcotics with intent to distribute, facing multiple charges for each of the different drugs as well as for transporting the product. CHP turned his case over to the High Impact Investigation Team (HIIT) and was booked and locked up in Fresno County Jail.
The bust is just the latest in the ongoing battle against hard drugs in America, especially amid the immigration crisis at the southern border, which is tied to human and drug smuggling rings run by cartels.
In 2023, fatal overdoses on fentanyl surpassed 112,000 for the first time in American history, and the hardest hit demographics were young people and black Americans. According to public health experts, the powerful synthetic opioid was responsible for most drug deaths in the US. The supply of illegal narcotics is varied and becoming more complex, with new concoctions finding their way into communities across the nation.
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