Twelve people went to jail and several kilos of cocaine were taken off the streets when local officers teamed up with several other law enforcement agencies as part of the Lone Star Task Force initiatives launched in and around Jackson County at the end of June.
Sheriff Rick Boone updated members of the Jackson County Commissioners Court Monday on the results of the recent raids conducted June 24–26.
Sixteen different agencies took part in the three-day task force operation, resulting in 11 local arrests (along with another major one in Wharton County), 13 people allegedly in the country illegally apprehended and turned over to federal Border Patrol officials, and a major drug seizure just up U.S. 59, near the Colorado River bridge in Wharton.
According to reports in the Wharton County Leader-Journal, a sister publication to the Jackson County Herald- Tribune, 43 kilos of cocaine were found by drug-detection K-9s from the Wharton Police Department on Tuesday, June 23, hidden among crates of fruit on an 18-wheeler bound for the Houston area.
That quantity of drugs is worth more than $1 million on the street, officers reported.
The driver of the 18-wheeler, Ricardo Hernandez Pequeno, 28, of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, was jailed early Tuesday on that offense, but he was just one of several more arrests to follow over the threeday joint-agency task force initiative, Sheriff Boone said.
Part of that initiative also involved intensified patrols along the southbound lanes of U.S. 59, Boone said, with officers watching for gun shipments and cash couriers headed back into Mexico.
None were found during the task force operation, but local law enforcement remains on high alert for any that may pass through the area in coming weeks, he said.
The task force operation rounded out an otherwise busy month for his department, the sheriff added, during which deputies answered 277 calls for service and initiated 97 traffic stops.
Others arrested during the recent sting operation included:
• Phillip Joseph Pena Sanchez, 27, on an outstanding bail jumping
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warrant.
• Damian Devante Butler, 28, on an outstanding warrant for violating a protective order.
• Darius DeVoan Martin, 30, on an outstanding bail jumping warrant.
• Jacob Daniel Lamas, 25, for marijuana possession.
• Camya Markell Lofton, 26, for fraudulent use or possession of someone else’s identification items.
• Teresa Ramirez Lopez, 39, on an outstanding bail jumping warrant.
• Cherie Annette Bricker, 37, for resisting arrest.
• Christian Tre Garza, 27, for marijuana possession.
• Anthony Torres, 34, for marijuana and controlled substance possession.
• Daylon Lee Riojas Hernandez, 18, for assault of a pregnant woman.
• William Gus Whatley III, 38, for public intoxication.
