Thread: Truck loaded with pot gets stuck in Rio Grande

Truck loaded with pot gets stuck in Rio Grande (1:36 p.m.)
By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched:11/10/2006 01:33:38 PM MST


A stolen pickup truck loaded with marijuana got stuck in the Rio Grande trying to flee from the Border Patrol on Thursday night near Tornillo, Juárez police reported.
The truck's occupants abandoned the vehicle on the Mexican side of the river bed and ran away. They have not been found. The truck, a 2005 gray Chevrolet, was reported stolen in El Paso, May 19, Juárez police said.

Police said it took officers from the tiny town of Guadalupe Distrito Bravos and Mexican federal agents several hours to to pull the vehicle from the river mud. The agents found 150 bundles of marijuana in the truck, weighing a total of 1,441 pounds, officials said.

Border Patrol officials could not be reached today for comment.

No wonder it sank. I suprised the tires didn't pop too. Talk about overloaded!

Dixie

Here are a lot more details than the El Paso paper printed:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4326738.html

Nov. 10, 2006, 7:05PM
Border Patrol agents accused of Mexican standoff

By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press

MONTERREY, Mexico — U.S. Border Patrol agents chasing after suspected drug traffickers on the Texas border allegedly crossed into Mexico and engaged in a brief standoff with Mexican police officers. No shots were fired, a Mexican official said today.

Jose Luis Delgado, a police officer in the town of Guadalupe, about 25 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, said he and two other officers responded Thursday afternoon to a report that a pickup loaded with marijuana had been abandoned in the Rio Grande when they encountered several U.S. Border Patrol agents on Mexican territory. Ciudad Juarez is located across the border from El Paso.

Delgado said he and the two other officers arrived to the scene with their weapons drawn.

"When we arrived (the U.S. officials) drew their weapons," Delgado said in a telephone interview, adding that no shots were fired.

Delgado said about 20 or 25 U.S. Border Patrol officers had formed a human chain along the shallow waters of the river and were unloading the packages from the vehicle when he identified himself as a police officer and asked the U.S. officials "wearing green uniforms" to leave because they were in Mexican territory.

"They even asked us to turn the car over to them, but I said no," Delgado said.

The U.S. officials returned to the U.S. side of the border and a few remained there until Mexican officials towed the car, Delgado said.

Rogelio Garcia, a spokesman with the U.S. Border Patrol El Paso sector, confirmed that U.S. agents seized about 300 pounds of marijuana from a pickup that at least two suspected drug traffickers abandoned in the river before running into Mexico.

Garcia said he couldn't confirm whether the pickup was on the Mexican side of the border because the matter "is still being investigated."

Garcia said U.S. agents began chasing the pickup fitted with a camper shell in Fort Hancock when the driver crossed the river into Mexico about three miles west of the Fabens port of entry.

Garcia said the area, where the river is about 2 feet deep, is commonly used by drug traffickers.

Rene Medrano, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office in Chihuahua, where Guadalupe is located, said state investigators seized 1,445 pounds from the 2005 Chevrolet pickup, which was reported stolen in El Paso.

He said the truck was stuck in mud about 115 feet from the banks of the Mexican side of the river.

Medrano said he couldn't corroborate the alleged incursion of U.S. agents into Mexico because "when state officials arrived, U.S. Border Patrol agents were on the U.S. side."

Medrano said the case has been turned over to federal officials.

Associated Press writers Marina Montemayor in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and Alicia A. Caldwell in El Paso contributed to this report.