12-13-2022, 12:00 AM
Nueces County traffic stop turns into largest
liquid fentanyl drug bust in US history
A traffic stop just south of Robstown on Wednesday has turned
into a history-making drug bust. It was also the first
liquid fentanyl bust in Nueces County.
Author: Wes Wilson, Leslie Adami
Published: 7:22 PM CST December 1, 2022
Updated: 10:50 AM CST December 5, 2022
NUECES COUNTY, Texas —
A traffic stop on U.S. Hwy. 77 just south of Robstown on Wednesday morning has
turned into a history-making drug bust. Authorities stopped a vehicle that had the
largest amount of liquid fentanyl ever seized in the United States.
This was also the first time liquid fentanyl has been found in Nueces County.
"During the search we located a compartment built in the gas tank of this vehicle,
and inside the gas tank was a modified tank which had roughly 25 pounds or 3 gallons
of liquid fentanyl," explained Mike Tamez with the Nueces County District Attorney's
Criminal Interdiction Unit.
A Precinct 3's constable deputy working with Tamez's unit made the drug bust.
U.S. Border Patrol was also involved.
How the liquid fentanyl was hidden -- and later found
Tamez said a number of things caused the deputy to believe something was not right.
First, the deputy found $6,700 in cash under the vehicle's carpet. Then the deputy
discovered a suspicious bolt in the rear floorboard of the vehicle that fed into the
vehicle's gas tank.
Tamez said the deputy immediately knew something was wrong because this is how
liquid meth is sometimes concealed. But this liquid didn't crystallize when hitting the
open air like meth does, and it later tested negative for meth.
One officer suggested it was fentanyl.
That test came back positive.
"When we spoke with our federal partners to help us with this case the one commonality
was that they never heard of this much liquid fentanyl ever being hit on a traffic stop
on a Texas highway," Tamez said.
Officers called in a HAZMAT unit, and the clean-up took hours.
The scene wasn't clear until 7 p.m.
Tamez said this drug bust will make a difference because fentanyl overdoses continue to
surge both in Nueces County and nationwide.
"It’s killing people," Tamez said. "It's overdosing and killing them. It's definitely one of
the most dangerous drugs and highly addictive drugs on the market today."
Breakdown of amount of fentanyl found
As we mentioned earlier, this is the first time fentanyl has been
found in liquid form in Nueces County.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) reports that two milligrams of powder fentanyl
can be lethal, depending on the person's body size.
Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez said one gallon of liquid fentanyl
equals 3,785,411 milligrams of the substance. When you do the math,
that turns in to more than five million lethal doses of fentanyl taken off the streets.
3NEWS Sr. Digital Content Producer Haley Williams contributed to this story.