April 02--PARKER COUNTY -- A deputy with a good eye for details helped net one of the biggest marijuana busts in recent memory in Parker County on Thursday.
About a ton and a half of marijuana was found inside of rock rakes, which are attachments for tractors that help scoop up rocks and are used for highway construction. With a street value of about $3,000 per pound of marijuana, Sheriff Larry Fowler estimated that the drugs seized -- which totaled almost 2,500 pounds -- are valued at approximately $7.5 million.
The rock rakes were manufactured in Mexico, according to the Parker County Sheriff's Office. The deputy was at a truck stop located off Interstate 20, Sheriff Larry Fowler said, when he noticed that the rock rake equipment on the back of a flat bed tractor trailer had an incomplete weld.
The deputy used a sheriff K-9 drug detection dog to inspect the load and the dog gave a positive alert for drugs, according to a press release sent out by the sheriff's office.
"This is a prime example of what lengths the Mexican drug cartels will go to in order to smuggle drugs into our country," said Fowler. "It is a never-ending battle."
The marijuana was tightly packed, possibly through the use of a hydraulic press or other tools, into the cylindrical part of the equipment, Fowler noted. That is how so much marijuana was able to be packed in and why it weighed so much, he said.
Weatherford-Parker County Special Crimes Unit investigators and Weatherford firefighters were called to the scene to assist in cutting the metal containers. When the top was cut off the cylinders, law enforement officials needed the help of a wrecker to hoist the containers in the air to shake out the drugs because they were so tightly packed, Fowler said.
Upon closer inspection, the cylinders looked like pieces of oil-field pipe, he said. And, he added, they were missing parts that would be essential to the rock rakes, such as the wheels.
"In other words, this wasn't equipment that could actually be used," Fowler said.
The driver of the tractor trailer is not believed to have known what was in the containers he was hauling, according to the sheriff's press release. The driver, who works for an independent trucking company, picked up the load in El Paso after it had passed through customs, Fowler said. The vehicle was headed for the east coast.
The Parker County Sheriff's Office is part of the High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area-Domestic Highway Enforcement and the deputy was doing a routine check as part of that enforcement team.
To dispose of the drugs, the sheriff's office will need to get a court order and incinerate the marijuana, Fowler said.
No additional details about the investigation were released and the case is still under investigation.
Copyright 2012 - Weatherford Democrat, Texas
