Drug-smuggling tunnel to Mexico found under abandoned KFC in Arizona.
Authorities in San Luis, Arizona found a 600-foot-long tunnel that they believe was used for drug smuggling in an old Kentucky Fried Chicken, per CNN.
The officials said they pulled a man over after they saw him carrying toolboxes in and out of the old KFC. When they searched his car, drug dogs alerted them to something inside, and they found two tubs full of drugs. There were 239 packages containing 14 pounds of cocaine, 30 pounds of white heroin, 13.7 pounds of brown heroin and 6.8 pounds of fentanyl. The fentanyl alone “translates to over 3 million dosage units,” Homeland Security Special Agent Scott Brown KYMA on Wednesday. In total it had a street value over $1 million.
From there, they were able to enter the KFC and find the tunnel, which was 22 feet deep and ran nearly 590 feet long. It ended with a trap door under a bed in a home in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, Homeland Security told KMYA.
“This tunnel was very well constructed and would have taken this Drug Trafficking Organization a long time to dig and would have been very expensive,” court documents state. “This tunnel necessarily required a combination of several individuals on both sides of the border, engaged in an intricate, risky transnational conspiracy to construct such a secretive structure.”
Jesus Ivan Lopez Garcia, the man with the drugs, purchased the KFC in April for $390,000. It had not been used as a restaurant in recent years. He now faces federal charges including conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine.
