Coast Guard cutter seizes 3,465 pounds cocaine, offloads in San Diego
Release No: 02-03
Mar. 6, 2002
USCG News
SAN DIEGO -- The 378-foot Coast Guard Cutter Rush, homeported in Honolulu, with a San Francisco-based Coast Guard helicopter crew, seized more than one and a half tons of cocaine and detained four men from a "go-fast" boat Wednesday, Feb. 5. The four men were taken to Tampa, Fla., shortly after the seizure for further disposition. The crew offloaded the contraband in San Diego today and turned it over to federal authorities.
Rush and its crew diverted from its patrol in the Pacific Ocean 100 miles south of Nicaragua to intercept a suspect vessel. As the cutter closed in on the 42-foot go-fast, the four men on board set it on fire and jumped into the sea.
After Rush personnel rescued the four men and extinguished the fire, the Rush boarding team boarded the go-fast. The team inventoried and counted 105 bales (estimated weight of 5,775 pounds). The team recovered 70 of those bales, which weighed about 3,465 pounds. The remaining bales were unrecoverable due to fire and fuel contamination, and posed a danger to the crew. The go-fast then sank on scene.
This seizure was the result of the careful coordination between the Joint Interagency Task Force West (JIATF-West) in Alameda, Calif., with multiple Coast Guard and Navy assets from across the country along with a Mexican Navy patrol boat and aircraft.
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