THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 16, 1996 TAG: 9608160586
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 54 lines
Maryland State Police seized 11.8 pounds of uncut cocaine bound for Hampton Roads on Tuesday.
The kilo bricks of cocaine - labeled with the insignia of a South American drug cartel - have an estimated street value of $500,000 to $1 million dollars.
Cpl. Mike Lewis, who specializes in drug interdiction on Route 13, made the bust on the outskirts of Salisbury, Md. He said 85 percent of the dealers his team arrests are heading for the Hampton Roads drug market.
``The Tidewater area is just flooded - saturated - with drugs and drug dealers,'' Lewis said. ``It's sad. It really is.''
On Tuesday afternoon, Lewis stopped a 1989 Lincoln Continental for going eight miles over the speed limit and for following another car too closely.
Lewis asked the driver, 29-year-old Earl Douglas Lee of Virginia Beach, for his license. But he didn't have one. Lee's Virginia license had been suspended.
``He was not licensed to drive in any state in the union,'' Lewis said. Passenger Emmanuel Cajuste, a 24-year-old Haitian from Brooklyn, N.Y., gave Lewis a license that identified him as Kevin Matthew Thomas of Salisbury.
``But he couldn't tell me where he lived,'' Lewis said. Cajuste told Lewis, who had stopped them outside Salisbury, that Salisbury was 30 miles farther south. When Lewis asked who owned the car, Lee and Cajuste gave a name that didn't match the one on the registration.
``There was obviously something going on,'' Lewis said.
Lewis arrested Lee for driving on a suspended license, handcuffed him and strapped him into the front seat of the police cruiser. When backup arrived, officers searched the Lincoln and found a secret compartment between its back seat and trunk wall, but they couldn't get into it.
Police took Lee and Cajuste - both convicted felons - to jail, and took the car to state police barracks. Once there, they used crowbars and a claw hammer to crack the heavy-gauge steel box.
``It was the most difficult compartment I've ever gotten into,'' said Lewis, who teaches courses to Hampton Roads police on ways that drug dealers smuggle dope.
Inside the box they found five kilos, or 11.8 pounds of pure cocaine, two fully loaded semiautomatic handguns, a box of ammunition, and two sets of latex gloves.
Cajuste, who is wanted in Norfolk on drug charges, and Lee were charged with 10 criminal offenses, including interstate transportation of cocaine, possession with the intent to distribute cocaine, trafficking cocaine with a firearm and carrying a loaded handgun on a highway.
Both men were being held in the Wicomico County Detention Center in lieu of a $1 million bail.
KEYWORDS: ARREST DRUGS ILLEGAL SMUGGLING TRAFFICKING
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