Woman arrested at KC bus station had ‘1.5 million lethal doses’ of fentanyl, feds say
A woman traveling from Los Angeles to New York was stopped at a Kansas City bus station Tuesday morning with enough fentanyl in her luggage for 1.5 million lethal doses, according to authorities.
The woman, identified in federal court records as 33-year-old Evelyn C. Sanchez is charged with possessing fentanyl with the intent to distribute.
Court records say she was carrying more than five pounds of the drug packaged in two bundles.
Kansas City police saw Sanchez get off a bus from Los Angeles and said it appeared she was “intently watching” as detectives checked luggage on the bus. When a detective approached her, Sanchez said she was heading to New York for “maybe a week,” and allowed police to search her bags.
Police noted they didn’t find any clothing inside the luggage and became suspicious.
Shortly afterward, a K-9 sniffing around inside the bus alerted authorities to a suitcase near where Sanchez was sitting.
None of other passengers claimed ownership of the suitcase, court records said. When confronted with the luggage, Sanchez said it belonged to her, and allowed police to search it.
Police said Sanchez appeared “very nervous.”
When asked about the contents of the suitcase, Sanchez allegedly told police she had “drugs.” She indicated she didn’t know what kind of drugs, “but it’s a lot,” she said, according to court records.
In the suitcase, police found more than five pounds of fentanyl — an amount “capable of killing thousands of people,” Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith said, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Kansas City police conducted the investigation with federal law enforcement agents.
William Callahan, a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent based in St. Louis, commented on the amount of fentanyl in a news release, adding that authorities seized “1.5 million lethal doses from the streets.”
Sanchez remained in federal custody Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. A court date has not yet been scheduled.
This story was originally published August 22, 2018 at 5:57 PM.