The Civil Guard has clarified the death of a young man who was carrying 1,200 grams of cocaine in his stomach and was abandoned in a health center in Santo Domingo de la Calzada (La Rioja) after two of the 93 capsules he had ingested broke.
The police force has arrested two men and investigated a third this Friday within the so-called “Eikel” operation. The detainees and the investigated are alleged perpetrators of crimes against public health for drug trafficking and belonging to a criminal group.
These three men were in charge of receiving a shipment of cocaine from Colombia through a “mule” or “human mail.” The “mules” are people who move illegal substances from one country to another by ingesting the drug in small packages that are kept in the stomach.
The police investigation began on April 24, when the agents received notice of the death of a 21-year-old boy who had been abandoned at the Santo Domingo de la Calzada health center.
The toilets could not do anything to save the man’s life, because two of the capsules he had ingested burst inside the stomach and caused his death.
The corpse was transferred to the Institute of Legal Medicine of La Rioja, in Logroño, for an autopsy, in which it was found that the deceased had 93 high-purity cocaine capsules in his stomach.
Investigators have identified the three people who took the victim to the doctor’s office, where they abandoned her without any documentation.
The two detainees and the person investigated traveled to the Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas airport on April 24 to pick up the young man, who was traveling from Colombia to Spain with a stomach full of cocaine capsules.
Once he landed, they put him in a vehicle to continue the trip to Vitoria, a town where they planned to extract the drug capsules for adulteration and distribution.
During the journey they decided to stop in the Rioja town of Santurde to rest, where the victim suddenly and unexpectedly began to feel bad, for which they took the documentation from her and left her at the Santo Domingo de la Calzada health center.
After obtaining the full identity of the deceased, the investigators were able to establish the itinerary followed until his arrival in Spain, as well as the vehicle in which he had traveled from Madrid to La Rioja.
With the analysis of all the information, it was possible to determine that the destination of the narcotic substance was the Basque Country, specifically Vitoria, where two of the people who abandoned the victim were hiding.
The Civil Guard made two entries and searches at the homes of the Álava capital of the two detainees as alleged perpetrators of these events.
With the seized drug, once adulterated and before its release on the market, a total of 13,069 doses could have been produced, valued at 274,455 euros.
The operation was carried out by the Organized Crime Anti-Drug Team (EDOA) of the Civil Guard in La Rioja and agents from the Rural Action Group (GAR) participated.
The proceedings and the detainees were placed at the disposal of the Haro Investigating Court number 2 and the judicial authority has ordered the admission of the two detainees to prison.
