A Santa Ana man was arrested Thursday on Interstate 80 in Henry County, Illinois, for possessing what state troopers believe was 16.8 pounds of brown heroin.
Lucas Mendiola, 36, was the lone occupant in a SUV that was the second vehicle pulled over on that stretch of I-80 in less than a month that contained a large quantity of street drugs, according to authorities.
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Mendiola was pulled over around 1:10 p.m. for following a vehicle too closely in the Silver Lexus SUV he was driving on eastbound Interstate 80 near Mile Marker 20, about one mile east of Geneseo, Ill. The heroin turned up after a search of the vehicle.
Quad-City Times has the scoop.
Mendiola was arrested on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance, possession with intent to deliver and trafficking and held at the Henry County Jail on $500,000 bond.
Troopers on Aug. 22 made what they believed at the time was the largest heroin seizure in Illinois history after another Henry County traffic stop. Tests later revealed they'd snagged 35 pounds of ecstasy with a street value between $4
million and $8 million.
While authorities are sure it was heroin in the SUV, they wanted to await further testing before guestimating a street value.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.