The pilot and passengers of a small plane were arrested on Thursday after they ran out of gas and were forced to land on a highway – where police discovered a stash of drugs.
Police in Oceanside, Calif., responded to a call at 1:43 a.m. Thursday about a 1976 Piper PA-28-235 that had “made an unexpected landing” on State Route 76 near Canyon Drive.
“The aircraft had landed on the roadway with no reported injuries to the passengers or any people on the ground,” police said. “The pilot, who was uninjured, reported engine failure as the cause of the emergency landing.”
Officers discovered “a large amount of narcotics,” which led to the arrest of pilot Gabriel Leon Breit, 21, and passenger Troy Othneil Smith, 36, on suspicion of illegal transportation of narcotics, the department said. A backpack tipped police off and prompted the search, Oceanside Police Department Deputy Chief Taurino Valdovinos said at a news conference.
“During the investigation they observed one of the individuals toss a backpack into a nearby brush – which apparently raised concerns among one of the officers,” Valdovinos said, according to KNSD-TV. “The individuals were arrested and during the subsequent investigation a small amount of cocaine was found on one of the passengers on the plane. And then the subsequent investigation of that revealed approximately one kilogram of suspected cocaine in the backpack that was discarded.”
The two had taken off from Arizona around 11 p.m. and were due to land at Bob Maxwell Memorial Airfield in Oceanside at 2 a.m., the Los Angeles Times reported. The pilot radioed engine trouble before its emergency landing, but the owner of the company explained the real problem.
Instead of having mechanical engine problems, the plane was simply refueledsaid Thomas Fries, who owns aviation and consulting firm Lead Turn, which leases the plane to a flying club called Plus One Flyers.
“The fuel selector was on the left and the left tank was completely dry,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “If you do something mean, you shouldn’t run out of fuel.”