Agents Score Goal In Border Pot Bust

Some enterprising Canadians have found a new use for those giant duffel bags hockey players use to haul their gear.

Three of the 4-foot-long bags, filled with an estimated $250,000 worth of high-grade marijuana, were seized Thursday afternoon after Border Patrol agents spotted three men walking around the border station near Metaline Falls.

Fourteen officers from seven agencies began beating the bushes for the suspects within 25 minutes of the sighting.

One man was nabbed near Crescent Lake, just north of Metaline Falls.

The suspect identified himself as Jeffrey Scott Dermott, 22, of Sicamous, British Columbia, but authorities suspect he may have given a false name. No driver’s license records could be found for Dermott.

The suspect was booked into the Pend Oreille County Jail on suspicion of felony possession of marijuana with intent to deliver.

With temperatures in the 90s, the fleeing suspects soon dropped their heavy loads, Pend Oreille County Sheriff Doug Malby said.

Two of the suspects got away, but Immigration and Naturalization Service Officer John Norris ran one of them down.

Malby said the 153 pounds of processed marijuana was a large seizure by anyone’s standards, and a record for Pend Oreille County.

The previous record was 50 pounds of low-quality pot, seized about five years ago.

“This stuff is really, really high quality,” Malby said.

It was the second time in three months that drug smugglers have been caught using hockey bags to ferry marijuana into Pend Oreille County from British Columbia.

“Maybe they’re loading up cartons of cigarettes and going back, I don’t know,” Malby said, alluding to one of the items most commonly smuggled from the United States to Canada.

A hockey bag with about 25 pounds of pot was found stashed in the woods just south of the border in May, but no suspect was sighted in that case.

This time, though, a manhunt was mounted quickly because federal agents were already on the scene and three sheriff’s deputies and the Ione and Metaline marshals were nearby. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police brought in a helicopter and tracking dogs.

Malby said the suspects who got away Thursday may have been picked up by a red or maroon Dodge sport utility vehicle. He said witnesses saw the vehicle turn around near the search site and head back to Canada.

Authorities believe the suspects rendezvoused with the vehicle after making their way back across the border on foot, Malby said. Officers hoped to identify the vehicle from photographs that are routinely taken at the border station.