4 Held, Including Father, Son, After Big Coke Seizure

Four men, including a father and his son, were arraigned on drug charges Thursday after being arrested in possession of 176 pounds of pure cocaine worth an estimated $30 million, Fullerton police said.

“We know this particular shipment was destined for Orange County,” Fullerton narcotics Sgt. Danny Becerra said in announcing the second largest cocaine seizure in the department’s history.

The suspects were arrested Tuesday evening in a department store parking lot in Ontario, Becerra said, culminating a day in which detectives had tailed the four from the parking lot to a house in the Riverside County community of Mira Loma and back.

Residences in Lynwood and Mira Loma

Jose Luis Marin, 23, and his father, Juan Serna Marin, 44, were arrested along with Johnny Estorga, 20, and Esteban Herrera, 48. The younger Marin resides in Lynwood while the other three men listed their address as a house on 56th Street in the remote Mira Loma community, police said.

Each was being held in San Bernardino County Jail on suspicion of conspiracy to sell cocaine and possession of cocaine for sale. Bail was set at $1 million each, according to Becerra.

Acting on a tip, Fullerton detectives staked out the parking lot of the Fedco department store on Archibald Avenue near the Pomona Freeway in Ontario. About 10 a.m. Tuesday, they saw two men later identified as the Marins waiting as two other men dropped off a small pickup truck in the parking lot.

The Marins drove a car and the late-model pickup with a camper shell to the house in Mira Loma, police said. Detectives said they then saw them loading packages from the house into the truck, which they drove back to the Fedco store and parked.

After detectives watched the truck for several hours, they saw the Marins return to it accompanied by Estorga and Herrera. This time, they started loading the packages from the pickup into a late-model sedan. Officers then made the arrests.

80 Plastic Packages

The cocaine--”pure stuff,” Becerra said--was wrapped in 80 plastic packages, each weighing one kilogram, or 2.2 pounds. The seizure was second only to a bust in April, 1988, which netted a 330-pound shipment of cocaine, he added.

The four suspects arrested in the case appeared to be operating as part of a ring, but the two men who originally dropped off the pickup truck were not being sought by police, Becerra said.

Becerra said news of the arrests was withheld for two days because the investigation into the case was still active and “we had some other things to do before we put it out.”