Audio By Carbonatix
Don’t you hate when you park near Mexico for a few minutes and end up with 35 pounds of weed in your car’s spare tire?
That’s what Daren Rucker, 51, of Tucson says happened to him on Tuesday, according to federal court records.
When Rucker pulled up at the northbound U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 19 near Amado, a drug-sniffing dog alerted to his Chevy pickup truck’s spare tire. Agents x-rayed the tire and netted about 35 pounds of pot.
In a federal complaint, an agent wrote that Rucker claimed he’d merely driven to Nogales, Arizona, parked his truck at a Circle K for about 20 minutes, then parked again at a local apartment complex to check his route back to the interstate.
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A search of his cell phone revealed a text message that agents thought was suspicious: “Folloh me me.” When asked about it, Rucker told agents he had no idea what they were talking about, records show.
We’ve seen no data on how well the “where’d-that-weed-come-from” defense works at trial.
