The officers of the NH had quite a night last night as they dealt with the State's largest cocaine bust and then had to deal with gasoline tanker that went kaboom in a very big way.
From the Sun: Officials stopped a semi-trailer truck on Interstate 15 Wednesday morning carrying 452 pounds of cocaine, making it the largest cocaine seizure in Nevada history.
Members of the Southern Nevada Interdiction Task Force stopped the northbound semitruck about 12:30 a.m. at the Jean exit after noticing it was being driven erratically, Metro Police spokesman Lt. Laz Chavez said. The truck had a Quebec, Canada, license plate and was drifting in and out of travel lanes, according to an arrest report released Wednesday.
Officials interviewed the driver, Gaston Danjou, outside the semitruck and he provided them with driver log information, but authorities noticed inconsistencies during their interview with him.
"While speaking with Danjou, I observed that he appeared to be more nervous than any normal person would be if they were being contacted by a police officer for a traffic violation," police wrote in an arrest report.
Danjou gave officials consent to search the truck, which yielded cocaine with a street value estimated at $16.4 million, officials said. A police dog detected the odor of narcotics and a detective found the cocaine in 10 duffel bags wrapped in several "bricks" in the truck's sleeper area.
Danjou was cooperative with officials during the process and was taken into custody.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/aug/10/officials-make-record-cocaine-bust-i-15-near-jean/
Note to drug traffickers. if you are driving with many millions of dollars in your rig, drive in a nice straight line and don't speed because if you do, you probably won't be pulled over, especially in Nevada.
Cops also busted a couple of grow houses in Pahrump this morning, taking about a million worth of plants out of circulation. And in Lincoln County, NV, Fox 5 reported that they took several million dollars of pot out of the pipeline when they found a farm of pot up North. I just wonder if the cops came across this pot when they were searching for the pilot who was killed in Lincoln County a couple of months ago. Maybe this is the reason why Nellis Air Force Base released very little information about the crash right after the plane crash. This pot bust would explain a lot.
Then there was the gasoline tanker truck that rolled over on the I-15 and blew up.
From the Sun: Southbound Interstate 15 in the northern valley reopened nearly 11 hours after a fuel tanker truck rolled over and exploded near the Lake Mead Boulevard interchange.
Although all lanes of the road are open, some of the repairs are only temporary and the Nevada Transportation Department will be closing some lanes next week to repair the road.
The truck crashed shortly before 4 a.m. Wednesday in the southbound lanes of the highway between the Lake Mead Boulevard off-ramp and the Owens Avenue overpass, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Jeremie Elliott said.
The fuel tanker truck overturned and burst into flames, but the driver escaped unharmed, Elliott said. It’s unclear what caused the accident.
The truck, which was carrying 9,100 gallons of unleaded fuel, was engulfed in flames when emergency crews arrived.
“Unfortunately, the damage to the roadway is a little greater than we thought,” Elliott said.
Troopers initially closed both sides of the highway, but the northbound lanes of I-15 reopened at 5:30 a.m., leaving the southbound lanes closed from the northern Las Vegas Beltway to D Street.
Troopers closed that seven-mile stretch of highway to avoid motorists being stuck for hours as the cleanup continued, Elliott said.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/aug/10/southbound-i-15-closed-after-tanker-truck-explodes/
I am kind of surprised this doesn't happen more often here. We have a major fuel depot by the Las Vegas Speedway, across the street form Nellis AFB and literally, the tankers run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays. Some of these drivers think they are Jeff Gordon by the way they take the turns, especially at Craig and Las Vegas Blvd.
Glad no one was hurt.
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