A small plane’s pilot and passenger were arrested Thursday after they ran out of gas and were forced to land on a highway — where police discovered a drug stash.
Police in Oceanside, Calif., responded to a call at 1:43 a.m. Thursday about a 1976 Piper PA-28-235 that had “made an unexpected landing” on State Route 76 near Canyon Drive.
“The aircraft had landed on the roadway without any reported injuries to the occupants or any individuals on the ground,” police said. “The pilot, who was unharmed, reported engine failure as the reason for the emergency landing.”
Searching the plane’s occupants, officers discovered “a large quantity of narcotics,” leading to the arrest of pilot Gabriel Leon Breit, 21, and passenger Troy Othneil Smith, 36, on suspicion of illegal transportation of narcotics, the department said. A backpack tipped police off and prompted the search, Oceanside Police Department Assistant Chief Taurino Valdovinos said at a news conference.
“During the investigation, they observed one of the individuals discard a backpack into nearby brush — which obviously raised concerns with one of the officers,” Valdovinos said, according to KNSD-TV. “The individuals were detained, and during the subsequent investigation a small amount of cocaine was found on one of the passengers of the plane. And then the subsequent investigation of that revealed approximately one kilo of suspected cocaine in the backpack that was discarded.”
The two had set off from Arizona around 11 p.m. and were set to land at 2 a.m. at the Bob Maxwell Memorial Airfield in Oceanside, the Los Angeles Times reported. The pilot radioed engine trouble before its emergency landing, but the owner of the company explained the real problem.
Rather than having mechanical engine trouble, the plane simply ran out of gas, said Thomas Fries, who owns the aviation and consulting company Lead Turn, which leases the plane to a flying club called Plus One Flyers.
“The fuel selector was on the left, and the left tank was bone dry,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “If you’re doing something nefarious, you better not run out of fuel.”
