US drug dealer yields ‘shabu,’ gov’t vehicle

A 32-year-old American national who regularly delivered drugs to his contacts in Makati City using a government vehicle was arrested Tuesday in his condominium unit.

When operatives of the police Anti-Illegal Drugs Special Operations Task Force (AIDSOTF) raided the unit of Brian Hill in The Columns Ayala Avenue at the corner of Ayala and Gil Puyat Avenues at 1 p.m., they seized some P50 million worth of methamphetamine hydrochloride or “shabu.”

Chief Inspector Roque Merdegia, AIDSOTF lead investigator, said they first found a kilo of shabu in Hill’s room, five grams of cocaine, Valium tablets and other drug paraphernalia.

The American later led them to a Mitsubishi Pajero sporting a red plate (SEP 825) where they found nine more kilos of shabu in a black box.

Hill, Merdegia said, apparently used the vehicle to deliver illegal drugs to his local contacts.

A check made with the Land Transportation Office showed that the government vehicle was registered with the National Power Corp. (Napocor).

“We are now coordinating with Napocor to check how Hill was able to drive the vehicle,” Merdegia said.

“Our informant told us that Brian Hill had been going in and out of the country for the past four years. He is a distributor of shabu and cocaine in Makati,” he told the Inquirer.

Asked how Hill was able to sneak in drugs through the country’s airports, he said: “We do not know that yet. We are still conducting follow-up investigation.”

Merdegia added that AIDSOTF sought the help of its counterpart in the US Drug Enforcement Agency in placing the American under surveillance as soon as soon as they received information about his drug-pushing activities.

“We conducted continuous case buildup on Hill. He actually just arrived from Hong Kong on Monday night,” he said.