Man Gets 3 Years For Hiding Drugs In Dog

A man was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for trying to smuggle cocaine through Kennedy International Airport in the belly of an Old English sheep dog.

The man, John Erik Roa, 22, a former pizzeria worker from Paterson, N.J., had pleaded guilty in January in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, admitting that he knew the dog he was supposed to pick up at the airport had had nearly 5 pounds of cocaine surgically implanted before being shipped as cargo from Bogota, Colombia.

The dog, since named Cokey, was near death when she arrived at Kennedy on Dec. 1 with 10 cocainefilled condoms in her abdomen. She has since recovered.