Bricks of cocaine worth more than $1 million were found Sunday in banana shipments to the Safeway stores in Woodinville, Bellingham and Federal Way in Washington State.
What We Know:
- Sgt. Ryan Abbott with the King County Sheriff’s Office reported produce workers at the Woodinville store were putting the bananas out on the sales floor when they saw “one of the boxes had brown paper in it, which caught their attention and then they looked further and found these bricks…They called the police and we went out there and it ended up being 22 kilos of cocaine with a street value of $550,000.”
- The almost 50 pounds of cocaine were found surrounded by ordinary boxes of bananas, which were stuck together for shipment. Abbott stated they are “still trying to determine where it all came from.”
- “That’s under investigation. We do know it was all shipped from a central warehouse, but we don’t know where it originated yet, so that’s a work in progress,” said Abbott.
- Bellingham Police Lt. Claudia Murphy told CNN affiliate KOMO that 23 kilograms (50.7 pounds) of cocaine were also found in banana boxes at a Bellingham Safeway.
- This is definitely a strange occurrence, with Abbott stating, “I know that Safeway has been great and they went through every single box in their warehouse and all of their stores just to make sure there’s no other issues…We see cocaine out here, but we don’t see this large amounts and we don’t see it in Safeway and we don’t see it in banana boxes…”
Hopefully, this incident is cleared up soon.
