Local News in Brief : Traffic Stop Nets Millions in Cocaine
Bell-Cudahy police officers who stopped a car for having an expired license tag discovered $21.5 million worth of cocaine in the trunk and arrested the driver, authorities announced Monday.
“It was just a standard, routine stop,” Detective Hector Camacho said. “But this guy was really, really nervous and became evasive.”
Officers arrested Byron Ottoniel Samayoa, 28, of Norwalk on Saturday morning after the search of the 1977 Oldsmobile he was driving uncovered a large leather suitcase containing 56 kilograms of cocaine wrapped in cellophane and black electrical tape, Camacho said. The packages had markings suggesting that the cocaine had been handled by a Central American drug trafficking network, he said.
Samayoa, a Guatemalan national, is being held without bail at the request of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Camacho said. He is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on drug trafficking charges in Huntington Park Municipal Court.
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