Woman Wanted in 1996 Drug Trafficking Case Arrested in Florida

A Los Angeles woman wanted on drug charges since 1996 was arrested in Tampa, Fla., as she tried to reenter the country on a flight from Jamaica, an FBI official said Thursday.

Bridgette Day, 36, was arrested Tuesday after a routine check at the airport, said FBI Agent James V. DeSarno.

A check of Day’s fingerprints at the FBI’s national crime information center showed that she was wanted for her role in what authorities have called a multimillion-dollar crime ring that sent powder and crack cocaine to cities in the Midwest and South, DeSarno said.

Day and her brother, Wayne Alfred Day, who authorities said was a leader of a Los Angeles street gang, were indicted in 1996 for their alleged roles in the ring.

A county probation officer once described Wayne Alfred Day as a street gang legend on the streets of Watts--”part of the folklore.”

Day’s gang, the Grape Street Crips, shipped cocaine by the kilos to other cities, the 1996 indictment said.

That indictment alleged that Bridgette Day obtained airline tickets, organized couriers to carry drugs to Cleveland and acted as a lookout at the airport.

Police officers in Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis and Jackson, Miss., arrested dozens of Wayne Alfred Day’s alleged confederates in 1996 and seized more that $500,000 in cash, more than 40 kilograms of crack and powder cocaine and five kilograms of amphetamines.

Wayne Alfred Day was later arrested in Las Vegas and sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison in 1997 after being convicted in Los Angeles federal court of running a narcotics network that imported cocaine from Mexico and distributed it across the country.

Bridgette Day will be returned to Los Angeles, where she will be prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office, DeSarno said.