Operator let go after fentanyl, heroin found stashed in trailer

Georgia authorities recently found a relatively small amount of illegal opioids in storage pods being hauled by a professional driver, but ended up simply letting him off with a following-too-close warning after taking a good look at the evidence available. 

Here's how the Georgia Department of Public Safety described the incident in a recent Facebook post:

Georgia authorities described these items -- including small amounts of fentanyl, heroin, and opium flowers/seeds, Georgia DPSLast week, MCO3 Schofill (Region D) stopped a CMV transporting storage units in Peach County for following too closely to another vehicle. During the inspection Officer Schofill had a narcotics detection K9 walk around the vehicle. The K9 alerted on one of the storage units, and during a search of the unit, five grams of suspected pure fentanyl, two grams of heroin, five dried opium poppy flowers, and a small bag filled with opium poppy seeds for cultivation, among other paraphernalia. The driver had no connection and the drugs were seized for destruction.

How was the officer able to conclude this operator was in the clear?

Chasen D. Woodie, a public information officer for Georgia DPS, ran it down for me. "He was stopped for following too closely, and during the course of the stop -- the officer who stopped him is pretty big into drug interdiction, always looking for clues -- the driver was acting pretty nervous, so they called the dog out to the trailer." 

There's plenty of reasons a driver might be nervous during a stop, of course, and in this case the officers on the scene determined he didn't have anything to do with the illegal narcotics.

"In this situation, the pod was locked and it had an address where it was coming from and going to," Woodie said, adding that the officer completed a Level 3 driver inspection and issued nothing more than a warning on the following-too-close violation.