The roughly 9 pounds of drugs were found Friday during an operation carried out by a North Texas task force on Interstate 20.
A man in Texas was arrested Friday in Smith County after authorities found about 42,000 fentanyl pills in his vehicle. The arrest, made by members of the North Texas Sheriff’s Criminal Interdiction Unit, comes right a week after a Dallas man was arrested in Plano after about 6,000 fentanyl pills were found in his vehicle during a traffic stop. In Friday’s incident, deputies meticulously stopped a vehicle on Interstate 20 in Smith County, about 100 miles east of Dallas, and found roughly nine pounds of fentanyl pills in a false compartment, authorities said recently.
Erik Marin Islas Angeles was arrested and was being held at the Smith County Sheriff’s Office in lieu of $2 million bail, authorities said. It was unclear whether he had an attorney at the time.
The interdiction unit includes sheriff’s departments from Collin, Grayson, Hunt, Parker, Rockwall, Smith, Tarrant and Wise counties.
“This influx of deadly fentanyl into our state and communities has to be stopped,” Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith said in a news release.
Collin County Sheriff Jim Skinner said in the release that the joint efforts are saving lives.
“This large seizure of fentanyl by NTXCIU deputies will make communities across East and North Texas that much safer,” he said. “The eight sheriff’s offices that comprise the NTXCIU will continue their close inter-agency cooperation to push back and fight the deadly scourge of fentanyl.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. Can you even imagine the intensity of it? The drug can enter the brain quickly after it’s consumed, making it highly addictive.
The opioid drug kills hundreds of Texans every year, according to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services. Among the seven priorities Gov. Greg Abbott named during his State of the State speech Thursday was taking tougher actions to stem the surge in fentanyl deaths in Texas, including recently in Carrollton. Abbott called the situation a crisis and said cases should be prosecuted as murder. He also called for expanded access to the overdose-reversing drug Narcan. “This travesty must end,” Abbott said.
A day before the speech, federal authorities and Carrollton police announced during a joint news conference that they had arrested a man they believe is the “main source of supply” of fentanyl tied to the deaths and hospitalizations of Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD students.
“To deal fentanyl is to knowingly imperil lives. To deal fentanyl to minors — naïve middle and high school students — is to shatter futures,” U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton previously said in a written statement to The News.
Dallas and Dallas County authorities said they plan to join the Overdose Detection Mapping Application program, a nationwide database that can alert officials about spikes and where they occur. Let’s hope that this initiative will hence bring new formations.
