In a strange turn of events, while enjoying a fishing trip with her family, the mayor of Tampa, Florida, and her relatives came across a 70-pound package floating in the water. This package turned out to contain 70 pounds of cocaine.
On July 23, Mayor Jane Castor uncovered this lot of cocaine, which is valued at some $1.1 million dollars. With a background as a seasoned Tampa police officer and the city's inaugural female police chief, Castor promptly identified the package enveloped in multiple layers of plastic as cocaine, according to city spokesperson Adam Smith's statement on Tuesday.
Chief Border Patrol Agent Walter Slosar, responsible for the Miami Sector, conveyed in a statement that his agents successfully seized the concealed narcotics. These substances were hidden within bricks, meticulously wrapped in what seemed to be cellophane, and featured an embellishment of a pink and blue butterfly image.
"Over the weekend, Border Patrol agents in the Miami Sector seized 70 lbs. of cocaine that was discovered by a recreational boater in the Florida Keys. The drugs have an estimated street value of approx. $1.1 million," he wrote in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Upon Castor's discovery of the cocaine, her family hoisted the package, roughly equivalent in size to a microwave oven, onto their boat. A tear in the packaging revealed that it was further compacted into tightly stacked bricks, as told by Castor to the Tampa Bay Times.
Ms Castor saved the location of their discovery on her watch, off the Middle Keys city of Marathon, and they headed back to their vacation rental, as she later recalled in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times.
