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CEDAR CITY — An illegal window tint started an investigation that led to a large drug bust in Iron County on Sunday.
The investigation began when a Utah Highway Patrol trooper spotted a Dodge Charger on I-15 just before 11 p.m. "driving slowly in the left lane with significant tint on its front driver's side window," a police booking affidavit states. The passenger side window had no tint.
Two women were in the vehicle, along with two children, ages 2 and 15, laying down in the back unrestrained, the affidavit states. A trooper attempted to question the driver.
"The driver provided a name and date of birth, which later we discovered was false, that did not return out of Utah. The female struggled to spell her own name and give us a description of the trip the group had taken. She also struggled to determine ownership of the car, insurance status, and did not know what year the vehicle was, which had only been registered three days prior," according to the affidavit.
The trooper became suspicious of further criminal activity and called for a drug sniffing police K-9 to do a walk around the car. The dog indicated the possible presence of drugs in the trunk, the affidavit states.
"In a black bag in the trunk, we located 12 packages of blue M-30 pills consistent with fentanyl. On the floor of the back seat, behind the driver's seat and right near the children, we found multiple loose fentanyl pills. Underneath the driver's seat I found a sealed box containing two vacuum-sealed kilos of unknown powder and a garbage bag with two more kilo packages. Throughout containers in the front seat area of the vehicle we found multiple rubber-banded stacks of U.S. currency," the affidavit states.
"In total the 12 packages of pills had a combined weight of approximately 25 pounds and the four vacuum-sealed packages had a combined weight of approximately nine pounds of unknown powder. Throughout the vehicle we located approximately $7,400 of currency in various denominations," the trooper wrote in the arrest report.
The driver, Andrea Carbajal, 23, was booked into the Iron County Jail and charged Monday in 5th District Court with nearly a dozen charges, including two counts of drug possession with intent to distribute, a first-degree felony and a second-degree felony; money laundering, a second-degree felony; and two counts of child endangerment, a third-degree felony. The affidavit says Carbajal was driving with a "revoked license for DUI and was on probation out of California for drug trafficking."
It was not immediately known whether the passenger was also booked into jail.
