A traffic stop in Utah turned into a major drug bust, police say, resulting in a woman being charged with possession of over $700,000 worth of fentanyl found in a pillow.
Police said Liliana Velazquez was in a car on the I-15 highway near the Utah-Arizona border, going approximately 85 mph in a 75 mph zone, according to ABC News.
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After abruptly slowing down and avoiding eye contact with police officers while driving past, she began to cross over the yellow line separating traffic at least three times, police said.
Police said they smelled marijuana coming from the car and that suspicious comments made by Velazquez and the male driver resulted in a search.
Upon searching, the officer found a large pillowcase in the back seat containing 7.3 pounds of fentanyl, roughly 30,000 pills, estimated to be worth $750,000, police said. Velazquez told police that the driver had no idea what was going on, stating she picked up the drugs in California and was bringing them to Colorado, police said.
Velazquez is currently booked in Washington County Jail.
The United States is currently battling a fentanyl epidemic. Fentanyl is the leading cause of death of adults in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 45. In 2020, 77% of all teen overdose deaths involved fentanyl, according to a study published by JAMA.
In Utah, data show a 125% increase in fentanyl-related deaths from 54 in 2019 to 122 in 2020.
Fentanyl deaths in Utah saw a sharp increase in the percentage of opioid deaths in 2019, hovering a little above 20% for fentanyl. Prior to 2019, the percentage of opioid deaths related to fentanyl sat under 10%.
The increase in fentanyl deaths is largely attributed to the border crisis, where the drug is seemingly overflowing from Mexico as immigrants cross into the U.S. A Texas sheriff said on Sept. 12 that fentanyl should be considered a weapon of mass destruction.
As of Sept. 12, Border Patrol agents have seized more than 16,800 pounds of fentanyl at the southern border, enough to kill the entire U.S. population more than 11 times over, since February 2021, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody said.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for comment.
