NEW YORK: Smuggler found a new way of smuggling drugs by remote controlled devices. Tijuana Municipal police seized a broken drone with six packages of crystal meth near San Ysidro border. The drugs weighed about 6.5 pounds.
A witness called Tijuana Municipal Police at 9:50 p.m. Tuesday after watching something fall from the sky and land in the Pueblo Amigo complex parking lot, just southeast of the San Ysidro Border Crossing, authorities said.
This is evidence that drugs are being transported by drones, Tijuana police said Wednesday.
Fox 5 did receive a statement from Amy Roderick of the Drug Enforcement Agency in San Diego which read, “we would not call using drones a new trend in smuggling… this method will only allow a small amount of drugs to be flown at a time and coupled with the ease of detection, does not make this method very profitable to these drug trafficking organizations.”
Tijuana Police said the silver and black aircraft was a Spreading Wings S900 model. The 6-propellor drone is controlled by a remote device and uses batteries.
“It has a total take off weight of 18 pounds maximum, that includes the craft, the battery and everything that’s going to be in the air,” said Brian Yates of Drones Made Easy of San Diego.
Yates also said he believes the drugs were probably too heavy for the drone to carry, something investigators also believe happened.
