SOURCE: Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC)

Guyana po­lice Mon­day said they are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the dis­cov­ery of 72.1 pounds of co­caine, which was found last Fri­day, dur­ing an op­er­a­tion along the Five Miles-Itu­ni Trail, Up­per De­mer­ara Riv­er.

In a brief state­ment, the po­lice said that dur­ing the op­er­a­tion, of­fi­cers ob­served a mo­tor pick­up trav­el­ling out of the trail. It said that up­on see­ing the po­lice, the dri­ver stopped the ve­hi­cle and fled in­to near­by bush­es, leav­ing the pick­up be­hind.

The po­lice said that they sub­se­quent­ly searched the ve­hi­cle and found a large garbage bag on the floor be­hind the dri­ver’s seat con­tain­ing 30 rec­tan­gu­lar parcels.

“Up­on ex­am­i­na­tion, the parcels were found to con­tain a whitish rock-like sub­stance sus­pect­ed to be co­caine. The sus­pect­ed co­caine was es­cort­ed to the Macken­zie Po­lice Sta­tion, where it was weighed and amount­ed to 72.1 pounds (32.7kg), be­fore be­ing lodged pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

The po­lice did not give a street val­ue for the drugs, not­ing al­so that “no ar­rests have been made as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue”.

Mean­while, po­lice say they de­tained three peo­ple, in­clud­ing a 43-year-old busi­ness­man fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of near­ly 10 pounds of cannabis and over two pounds of co­caine in Bar­ti­ca, Re­gion Sev­en.

In a state­ment, the po­lice said that the cannabis and co­caine were found on Sun­day and that act­ing on in­for­ma­tion re­ceived, pro­ceed­ed to the prop­er­ty, where they con­tact­ed a 38-year-old fe­male dis­patch­er and con­duct­ed a search in her pres­ence.

Dur­ing the search, the po­lice found a card­board box wrapped in a plas­tic bag in the front por­tion of the yard. The box con­tained sev­en bulky parcels in­clud­ing six con­tain­ing a quan­ti­ty of leaves, seeds, and stems sus­pect­ed to be cannabis, and the oth­er con­tain­ing a whitish, rock-like sub­stance sus­pect­ed to be co­caine.

The woman was ar­rest­ed and es­cort­ed to the Bar­ti­ca Po­lice Sta­tion along with the sus­pect­ed nar­cotics. The po­lice said dur­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions, they ap­pre­hend­ed a 43-year-old busi­ness­man of Vig­i­lance, East Coast De­mer­ara, in con­nec­tion with the mat­ter.

The busi­ness­man was al­so want­ed in con­nec­tion with an ar­rest war­rant re­lat­ing to a sep­a­rate nar­cotics mat­ter. At the time of his ap­pre­hen­sion, he was in the com­pa­ny of a 36-year-old taxi dri­ver and a search of the ve­hi­cle re­sult­ed in the dis­cov­ery of a plas­tic bag con­tain­ing a whitish, rock-like sub­stance sus­pect­ed to be co­caine was found in the dri­ver-side door pock­et.

The sus­pect­ed co­caine was weighed in the pres­ence of the taxi dri­ver and amount­ed to 2.7 grams. The taxi dri­ver was ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the dis­cov­ery, while the busi­ness­man was al­so tak­en in­to cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)