Drug smugglers hide 30 pounds of liquid meth in Lipton Green Tea bottles

Police in Newnan, Ga., arrested two people in the parking lot of a Walmart on Saturday after they were found with 30 pounds of liquid methamphetamine hidden in bottles of Lipton Green Tea.

The husband-and-wife suspects said they were supposed to deliver the drugs to metro Atlanta and had bad feelings about the trip, police said.

They were being paid $5,000 to make the delivery to Sandy Springs, north of Atlanta, Newnan Police Chief Douglas Meadows told reporters.

Police said Rafael De la Cruz, 30, and his wife, Abigail Valles, 29, drove to Georgia from Laredo, Texas, where they live.

Newnan police began watching their car, with Texas plates, in the Walmart lot because someone reported it as suspicious, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Officers approached the car and spoke with De la Cruz, who was the driver, reported Fox 5 in Atlanta.

Police said he appeared nervous and consented to a vehicle search. They found a black duffel bag in the back seat containing 24 bottles of Lipton Green Tea filled with meth, not tea.

Valles admitted they had been caught three times before for drug trafficking and that the meth came from the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico.

“They were going around the back of the store looking for a Dumpster to throw it in because he had a bad feeling that they were going to get caught,” Meadows told WSB-TV in Atlanta.

The police chief was happy to get the drugs off the street and relieved that no could mistakenly drink the meth if the couple had tossed it away.

“Some homeless person could grab one and drink it thinking it was green tea” Meadows told reporters. “They would be dead in a little bit.”

De la Cruz and Valles are in the Coweta County Jail charged with trafficking meth.

This story was originally published April 19, 2017 at 3:33 PM with the headline "Drug smugglers hide 30 pounds of liquid meth in Lipton Green Tea bottles."