Marijuana, Cocaine found at Trinidad soft drink factory

(Trinidad Guardian) A ship­ment of mar­i­jua­na and co­caine to­talling 13 bags were dis­cov­ered by em­ploy­ees as they were of­fload­ing a con­tain­er on the com­pound of Caribbean Bot­tlers Lim­it­ed along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way in Tu­na­puna yes­ter­day.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the ship­ping con­tain­er orig­i­nat­ed from Mex­i­co and al­so con­tained as­sort­ed drinks, in­clud­ing soft drinks, juices and beers.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about noon em­ploy­ees were un­pack­ing a ship­ment of goods when they no­ticed 12 duf­fel bags and one cro­cus bag to the back of the con­tain­er be­hind the goods. They im­me­di­ate­ly called the po­lice and of­fi­cers of the Tu­na­puna Po­lice Sta­tion re­spond­ed.

Up­on check­ing, the of­fi­cers dis­cov­ered that the bags con­tained an undis­closed amount of in­di­vid­u­al­ly pack­aged com­pressed mar­i­jua­na and co­caine.

Crime Scene In­ves­ti­ga­tors vis­it­ed the scene and processed it while the items were seized by the po­lice. No one has been ar­rest­ed for the find.

How­ev­er, of­fi­cers from the Or­gan­ised Crime and In­tel­li­gence Unit are ac­tive­ly con­duct­ing en­quiries. Act­ing ACP Ja­cob and Snr Supt Cur­tis Paul, of the North­ern Di­vi­sion, are head­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia un­der strict anonymi­ty, a work­er said he and his col­leagues were left in shock over the find­ing.

Al­though not want­i­ng to com­ment much be­cause it had left him “very much afraid,” the work­er said: “I don’t know where the con­tain­er was shipped from but what I do know is that some­body got to an­swer for that!”

Com­pa­ny of­fi­cials who were on the com­pound at the time Guardian Me­dia was present re­fused to com­ment. One of­fi­cial said the com­pa­ny would send out a re­lease, how­ev­er, up to press time, no re­lease was sent.

Ef­forts to reach ex­ec­u­tive San­jay Ja­grup of Caribbean Bot­tlers Trinidad, mak­ers of Co­ca-Co­la lo­cal­ly, for com­ment via tele­phone were un­suc­cess­ful.

But in a state­ment, the com­pa­ny con­firmed it re­ceived a ship­ment of prod­uct in its ware­house which con­tained il­le­gal sub­stances. It said it re­gret­ted that any in­di­vid­ual or group would choose to us­es its busi­ness for il­le­gal pur­pos­es and strong­ly con­demned that act. It said the com­pa­ny is ful­ly co-op­er­at­ing with po­lice in their in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

This was the fourth ma­jor drug find in just over one month.

On De­cem­ber 4, po­lice seized $3.8 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na and co­caine at an apart­ment at Re­gent Gar­dens, West­moor­ings.

On No­vem­ber 9, a cache of high-pow­ered mil­i­tary type weapons, am­mu­ni­tion and over 100 pack­ets of mar­i­jua­na were seized by po­lice at Munroe Road, Cunu­pia.

And on No­vem­ber 25, po­lice seized in $3 mil­li­on mar­i­jua­na at a house at North Val­sayn.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the lat­est drug find are con­tin­u­ing.