The Alamogordo, New Mexico grandma, Melodie Peil, bought the van at a local dealership and drove it on vacations and to events with her grandkids — with 13 and-a-half-pounds of pot in it. She even took it over the U.S. border into Mexico without anyone being the wiser to what was stashed inside.
She found out when the door handle needed fixing. A friend volunteered to do that job and when he took of the door’s paneling Friday — bingo! Five bricks of marijuana were stashed in there.
“My jaw dropped when I saw that,” Peil told the Alamogordo News.
Peil called Alamogordo Police Department and Detective Sgt. David McColley said that given the van did not smell of marijuana when she bought it, the cannabis was likely in there about 15 years. Street value? At the time she bought the van it would have sold for somewhere close to $3,500, which is what Peil paid for the van that stored it.
There were holes in another door that she’s never given much thought to but Sgt. McColley believes the van must have been seized in a drug haul and that officers must have taken pot from other doors but missed the pot in the side-door. After being used as evidence, it was likely sold at auction.
Lest you wonder, pot laws in New Mexico allow for medical marijuana — it’s one of 23 states and the District of Columbia that does — but without a licence possession of marijuana is still a criminal offence. It doesn’t matter anyhow, police said the pot was so old it would no longer be of use.