Man arrested after 'trying to take one of 15 bricks of cocaine that washed up on a beach'
An American man has been arrested after he allegedly picked up parcels of cocaine that he found washed up on a Mississippi beach.
More than a dozen bricks emblazoned with a 'Dior' label have washed ashore in the town of Biloxi, a city that sits on the Gulf of Mexico.
While it appears he had nothing to do with the class A substance turning up in Biloxi, Joey Lee Ware was charged with aggravated trafficking of a controlled substance after he found some of the packages containing the drugs and allegedly tried to keep them.
Biloxi Police Department Captain Thomas Goldsworthy urged locals to not do the same if they come across any more of the mysterious drug bundles.
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"One and a half [bricks] was actually discovered by a citizen, and this is the important part," he said.
"If you discover it, you should call us, he instead decided to do other things with it and he was arrested and charged with aggravated trafficking."
Volunteers from the nearby Keesler Air Force Base were doing a rubbish pick-up at the Biloxi waterfront on June 13 when they found more than just trash.
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The group of volunteers found several brick-type packages, which turned out to be kilograms of cocaine.
They soon found eight bricks in total of the illegal drug, which promoted a call to the Biloxi Police Department.
“Keesler has a lot of volunteers that come out and maintain that area of the beach, and while they were doing so they noticed a package in the water and while they were doing so they noticed several more,” Captain Goldsworthy said, as per WLOX News.
Before the day was over, a total of 11 and a half bricks of cocaine were found, coming in at a street value of $1 million ($AUS 1.4 million, £579,000), according to local news reports.
A total of 15 bricks have been found since June 13.
Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics Director Steven Maxwell told WLOX News that authorities are still trying to figure out where the bricks originated from.
"There was likely to be a large amount of drugs that either fell off a vessel or they were intentionally dropped off to be picked up by someone else or another group of individuals,” he said.
Biloxi police are asking for any people who come across any suspicious packages in the area to phone police... and to not keep them for themselves, of course.
Rachel Lang