Driver arrested after 15 pounds of cocaine found in trunk during I-15 traffic stop

Troopers found more than 15 pounds of cocaine inside a car they pulled over on I-15 north of Cedar City Sunday.

Troopers found more than 15 pounds of cocaine inside a car they pulled over on I-15 north of Cedar City Sunday. (Mark Wetzel, KSL-TV)


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CEDAR CITY — A driver who was pulled over for allegedly following another vehicle too closely and making an unsafe lane change on Interstate 15 was subsequently arrested after officers found more than 15 pounds of cocaine inside the car.

Janely Yvette Lopez, 22, was booked into Iron County Jail early Sunday morning, a few hours after she was stopped by a Utah Highway Patrol trooper on northbound I-15 north of Cedar City just after 12:30 a.m.

According to a probable cause statement filed in support of Lopez's arrest, the arresting trooper watched her vehicle first follow a semitractor-trailer closely before making an abrupt lane change in front of an SUV in the left lane. The subject vehicle then changed lanes again, cutting off the semi and causing its driver to hit the brakes, the trooper wrote in the affidavit.

After getting the driver to pull over onto the northbound onramp at Exit 71, the trooper began questioning the driver, identified as Lopez in the affidavit. The vehicle was a rental car, according to the statement.

Read the full article at St. George News.

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