Cocaine worth US$1M found in banana boxes at three Safeway stores
Bricks of cocaine worth more than US$1m were found up in banana shipments delivered to three grocery stores in Washington state.
Store workers discovered the drugs weighing almost 50 pounds on August 18 at Safeway stores in Woodinville, Bellingham and Federal Way.
The workers at the Woodinville store were putting the bananas out on the sales floor when they saw something strange, said Sgt. Ryan Abbott with the King County Sheriff's Office.
"One of the boxes had brown paper in it, which caught their attention and then they looked further and found these bricks," Abbott was quoted as saying.
"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 cocaine was surrounded by ordinary boxes of bananas, which were stuck together for shipment, Abbott said.
"We're 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," Abbott was quoted as saying.
"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."
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