ST. GEORGE — A broken brake light led to the arrest of two women from California following a traffic stop where troopers reportedly seized more than 7 pounds of cocaine from the backseat of the car.
On Sunday, a UHP trooper noticed a vehicle heading north on Interstate 15 in Iron County, with window tint film covering one of the brake lights. When the trooper got behind the vehicle and activated his emergency lights, the driver accelerated and continued north for more than a mile, then pulled off the right shoulder near mile marker 73 just south of Parowan and stopped.
The trooper approached and spoke to the driver, Aleidi Limon Romero, 19, who told the trooper she only had a driver’s license issued out of Mexico, while the vehicle’s license plates were issued out of California.
The driver was asked to sit in the trooper’s patrol vehicle as he wrote out the citation. He became suspicious of further criminal activity and asked the driver for consent to search the car, which she granted, according to the report.
The passenger, Lidia Norzagaray Veliz, 28, also consented to the search, according to police. While searching the backseat area of the vehicle, the officer located a bag and inside found numerous packages that contained either suspected cocaine or what appeared to be fentanyl powder. The packages had a combined approximate weight of more than 7.5 pounds.
With the possibility of the substance being fentanyl, the trooper noted, the packages were not tested at the scene. Instead, they were to be tested in a “controlled environment” following the arrest.
It was unknown whether the packages contained cocaine or fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50-100 times stronger than morphine. But sometime later, Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Cameron Roden told St. George News that based on testing, the substance was cocaine.
The driver and passenger “both showed knowledge that the narcotics were in the vehicle,” the trooper noted, and both were booked into the Iron County Jail facing possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance. The passenger also faces one count of possession of paraphernalia, while the driver was issued a citation for never obtaining a license.
Following the arrest Sunday, the trooper requested that both suspects be held without bail, noting that neither suspect had any ties to Utah, and alleged that both had ties to Mexico and were transporting a large amount of narcotics. The suspects posed a substantial risk of fleeing the jurisdiction of the court. The request was granted and both women remain in custody without bail.
According to a 2019 report released by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), if broken down into street-level sales, 3 kilos of cocaine was valued at more than $420,000.
This report is based on statements from court records, police or other responders and may not contain the full scope of findings. Persons arrested or charged are presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law or as otherwise decided by a trier-of-fact.
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