Police busted two women trafficking roughly 51 pounds of heroin hidden in the gas tank of their car while traveling through Mississippi with an infant.
An officer with theRankin County Interstate Interdiction Task Force pulled over a white Ford SUV Monday evening before noticing something strange about the “undercarriage of the vehicle” near the gas tank. The vehicle was taken to the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department for further inspection, where police found a hidden compartment in the gas tank containing the massive haul of heroin, reports WAPT News.
Authorities arrested 23-year-old Arlene Virdiana Moya and 23-year-old Trisha Lynne Ibarra for aggravated trafficking of heroin. Ibarra was traveling with her 3-month-old baby, who was removed from her custody and placed with Child Protective Services after the arrest.
“Regular mom or dad, who would even consider transporting drugs with a child with them in the car?” said Sheriff Bryan Bailey, according to WAPT News. “But, I’m telling you, these drug cartels are ruthless; they go to whatever means necessary. They use whatever they can to get around us and around getting caught.”
Police say the 51 pounds of heroin would sell on the street for anywhere from $10 to $20 million. Officials said the particular substance they seized, called white heroin, is manufactured in Mexico and smuggled across the border.
Drug addiction continues to wreak havoc in states throughout the country, and the problem appears to be getting worse.
Nationally, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death for Americans under age 50, killing 63,600 people in 2016. The increase is driven primarily by opioids, which claimed 42,249 lives last year, a 28 percent increase over the roughly 33,000 lives lost to opioids in 2015, according to data released Dec. 21 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Opioid overdoses made up a staggering 66 percent of all drug overdose deaths in 2016, surpassing the annual number of lives lost to breast cancer.
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