Another cocaine shipment washes ashore in Quezon, disrupts family picnic

LUCENA CITY—Suspected cocaine continued to turn up on the shores of Quezon province with the latest find, estimated to weigh at least 7 kilograms, disrupting a beach family picnic in the town of Mauban.

Fish vendor Ruel Perez was at a picnic with his family on a Mauban beach when their attention was drawn to seven bricks of suspected cocaine bobbing in the waters and being carried by waves to the shore.

Maj. Elizabeth Capistrano, Quezon police public information chief, said the bricks with white substance believed to be cocaine washed ashore past noon at the village of Cagsiay 1 which faces the Pacific Ocean.

The bricks were wrapped in packing tape, Capistraga said.

On Sunday (July 7), the bricks were brought to the police laboratory in Camp Nakar in this city.

If confirmed to be cocaine, the haul would be worth P35 million in the streets where a kilogram of cocaine sells for P5 million.

It was not the first time that suspected cocaine washed up on the province’s shores.

Last February, a 15-year-old boy found a brick of cocaine weighing more than a kilogram also in Mauban.

In April last year, fishers from the island town of Perez, also in Lamon Bay in the Pacific Ocean, found a total of 28 kg of cocaine, worth P280 million, and 16.5 liters of liquid chemical that could make about 13 kg of crystal meth worth P130 million.

Another group of Quezon fishers also recovered in the area a “sophisticated, high-tech” tracking device used in monitoring drug shipments. DELFIN T. MALLARI (Editor: Tony Bergonia)