Nearly 1000 lbs of marijuana seized in Cecil Co drug bust

Two men were arrested and approximately 938 pounds of marijuana were seized after a traffic stop in Cecil County Monday.

Just after 8 p.m., an officer with the Maryland State Police pulled over a white Ford Transit U-haul van for a traffic violation on the exit ramp from I-95 to Route 279.

It's estimated 28 million vehicles travel along this stretch of I-95 each year, and it would be easy to miss the white cargo van out of Philadelphia with the smiling woman pictured on the side.

 

But the pair of 23-year old men stopped by a trooper on Monday evening certainly aren't smiling now.

 

"Upon the stop, approaching the vehicle... during the course of his traffic stop... he was able to get a canine scan of the vehicle, at which time the canine gave a positive alert," said Lt. Daniel Everett of the Maryland State Police.

Positive for pot-- and 'Rocky' the drug-sniffing dog ultimately helped police discover almost a thousand pounds of the stuff---all crammed into that van in 30 separate moving boxes.

The two men, identified as Baojie Chen and Da Fen Xiong, both from Philadelphia, were arrested and taken to the JFK Highway Barracks for processing. They face several marijuana possession charges.

 

Sealed in thick plastic bags, humans may not be able to detect the smell, but long after the arrests, the lab still gets giddy when she enters the room where the take is held.

 

"It is a higher end or higher grade of marijuana,” said Everett, “Again, its street value can go upwards of $5,000 a pound and that's just at the pound not accounting for breaking it down further and further and further.  The dollar amount can grow."

 

That's a street value of more than $5 million in one of the largest pot busts troopers here can remember---all thanks to a Labrador Retriever who specializes in retrieving marijuana in a big way.