| Photo: Wyoming Highway Patrol |
| This 170 pounds of marijuana had three different owners in one night — first the smugglers, then the carjackers, then the cops. |
What would you do if you were smuggling 170 pounds of marijuana across the United States and you were carjacked? Two accused would-be pot smugglers came up with the wrong answer Friday night.
Smack dab in the middle of Wyoming, on I-80 near Sinclair, the erstwhile pot smugglers had their car hijacked, according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol, reports Howard Pankratz at The Denver Post. And the victims decided to call the cops.
The man and woman accused of hauling the weed are in the jailhouse now, along with one of the two male carjackers, according to Sgt. Stephen Townsend, spokesman for the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
Troopers were told of the alleged carjacking at about 9 p.m. on Friday. The victims said a couple of guys in a red SUV had taken their car by force and left them sadly standing by the interstate, unharmed but weedless.
It wasn’t long until troopers spotted both the red SUV and the carjacked vehicle. Two dudes were transferring bundles of marijuana from the car to the SUV.
When the alleged carjackers saw the lawmen, they took off at a high rate of speed in the SUV, throwing bundles of cannabis out the windows as they fled.
The SUV sped into the town of Rawlins, Wyoming, where one of the alleged carjackers jumped out. The SUV slammed into a snowbank, then the driver took off on foot, as well.
The first of the alleged carjackers was quickly apprehended with the help of the Rawlins Police Department, but the second guy got away.
Law enforcement officers seized the 170 pounds of marijuana, which they claimed had a street value of about $425,000. Since cops traditionally aren’t very bright at math, we should note that unless they’re lying, the pot was supposedly worth $2,500 a pound.
The two victims of the carjacking were allegedly transporting their “illegal load” from Utah to an unknown location somewhere in North Carolina, according to Townsend.
“This case has many as of yet unanswered questions and remains under investigation,” Townsend said. Ya think?
“You can’t make this stuff up,” Townsend said.
“If the transporters waited a bit longer, the call to the police might have paid off,” wrote one commenter on the story at The Denver Post website. “The drugs would have been in the other car and there’s not too many places for the red SUV to hide. You get your car back, you find out who just hijacked your drugs, and you might be cut loose because the evidence against you is a bit circumstantial and you claim you got hijacked on a mistaken identity.”
“Just a thought,” the commenter wrote. “I don’t watch CSI, so I could be way off in my reasoning.”
