TRUCK CARRIED OLIVE OIL, $5M IN COKE

By Michael O. Allen and Bill Sanderson, Record Staff Writers | Saturday, October 20, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

A routine police inspection of a truck carrying olive oil led to the seizure of 393 pounds of cocaine valued at more than $5 million, the largest drug shipment seized on New Jersey highways this year, officials said.

State troopers followed the truck when it left a weighing station in South Jersey at 8:30 a.m. Thursday and arrested four men as they unloaded the cocaine that evening in Edgewater. A fifth suspect was charged in Salem County.

State police spokesman Dan Cosgrove said Trooper Manuel Gordillo was inspecting the truck on Interstate 295, at Carneys Point Township in Salem County, when he noticed fluid leaking from the rear of the truck.

Gordillo saw the cocaine behind the olive oil after being permitted to search, but he allowed the truck to leave, Cosgrove said. Gordillo, members of the Statewide Narcotics Task Force, and Salem and Bergen County police then followed the truck to the Havana Potato Truck Lot on River Road in Edgewater, he said.

Superior Court Judge Marguerite T. Simon in Hackensack set bail at $2.5 million each for four of the suspects, identified as Gonzalo Castellanos-Arroyave of North Bergen, Milton G. Vera of Queens, Edson G. Pantoja of Miami, and Alejandro Lumus of Miami.

They were charged with possession of cocaine, possession with intent to distribute, and conspiracy and were being held in the Bergen County Jail Friday.

A fifth man, Lidio Ocana of Union City, the truck’s driver, was charged with the same offenses and was being held in the Salem County Jail on $2 million bail.

Cosgrove said the seizure was the first fruit of “Operation Roadside,” started with $478,000 in federal funds in July to combine state troopers and the commercial transport industries in a program emphasizing interdiction and public awareness.

Correction: CLARIFICATION: An article in Saturday’s editions reported that four men were arrested on drug charges in a truck lot in Edgewater. The company that leases the lot, Havana Potato Co., was neither implicated nor involved in the incident, state police said. (PUBLISHED, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1990, PAGE a02.)

ID: 17320244 | Copyright © 1990, The Record (New Jersey)