Contractor Arrested After Cocaine Found in King Airport Bathroom
A contractor working on renovations at King Airport has been arrested and charged with smuggling cocaine into the airport’s bathroom, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court.
Keilin Lopez-Lopez was charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine, according to an affidavit signed Monday.
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The incident occurred Friday when a V.I. Port Authority employee reported a man apparently tampering with a trash receptacle built into the wall of a stall of a King Airport bathroom, according to the affidavit.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers searched the stall and found two bricks of cocaine stashed inside the wall under the trash receptacle, according to the affidavit.
Surveillance video showed a man wearing a backpack who “appeared to be an employee for a company contracted to work on the airport remodel,” enter the stall, and “the backpack was placed among other random items inside hard secondary for an examination by a drug detection K-9,” according to the affidavit. “The K-9 alerted to the presence of drugs on the backpack.”
The employee, identified as Lopez-Lopez, told officers in an interview that he’d been paid $3,000 to stash the bricks of cocaine inside the wall, and “it was the first and only time he had ever done anything similar to that night’s activity,” according to the affidavit. Officers said the cocaine weighed just over 10 pounds.
- Contact Suzanne Carlson at 340-714-9122 or email [email protected].
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