14,000 pounds of marijuana seized from a truck in Bolingbrook in record haul
Illinois State Police found nearly 14,000 pounds of marijuana hidden behind pallets of hot peppers in a semi-trailer at a Bolingbrook truck stop in March 2001. The agency called it a national inland record for a motor-vehicle seizure, valued at about $20 million.
🇺🇸 Bolingbrook, Illinois · Illinois, United States
Illinois State Police found 14,000 pounds (about 6.35 tonnes) of marijuana hidden behind
pallets of hot peppers in a semi-trailer parked at a Bolingbrook truck stop in March
2001.[1]Officers had flagged the trailer as suspicious and brought in a K-9 unit, and
the police dog sniffed out the drugs under the pepper cover load.[1]
Record haul
Dan Kent, a deputy director of the Illinois State Police, called it the largest single
seizure of marijuana inside the United States border in history.[1]The 175 boxes were
carted to the State Police headquarters warehouse in Springfield because there was too
much to store locally, and were valued at $20 million.[1]
Corridor watch
The trailer sat near Interstate 55 and Illinois Route 53, a corridor the authorities were
watching as a major drug-trafficking route, and the case began as a DEA
investigation.[1]The State Police annual report confirms the March 2001 seizure of
nearly 14,000 pounds from a truck tractor semi-trailer in Bolingbrook, calling it a
national inland record for a motor vehicle.[2]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
No opened source gives a separate date for the seizure; 13 March 2001 is the Tribune report's publication date as linked from the retrospective.
No arrests were reported in the opened sources.
The retrospective's only picture is a captioned stock photo of emergency lights, not the 2001 seizure.
The retrospective calls the haul the largest single seizure inside the United States border while the State Police report calls it a national inland motor-vehicle record; the report keeps both wordings.
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