MISREADING OF LICENSE PLATE LED TO DRUG STOP

Father Of Driver Doesn't Know Why His Son Was With A Drug Smuggler Driving
Across Kansas.

COLBY -- If a Colby police officer hadn't confused the letters "K" and "X"
on a license plate last week, a drug dealer might still be alive and on the
run.

But Cpl. Scott Sitton read the wrong letter, and the events that followed
led him to pull the car over. In short order, one of the two men in the car
killed himself with a gunshot to the head, and officers found $3.7 million
in cash in the car.

The cash seizure was the largest in state history.

Kansas authorities later learned that the dead man was being sought in
connection with drug trafficking and was linked to nearly $6 million that
had been seized earlier that day at a storage locker in Fort Collins, Colo.

It all began about 9 p.m. Jan. 14, when Sitton saw a driver trying to
maneuver a Ford Taurus into position for gasoline at a service station just
off the highway in Colby. The driver didn't seem familiar with the car, so
the officer radioed a dispatcher with the license plate number.

The license plate didn't go with the Taurus, which was rented, so the
officer drove by again to see whether he had misread it. He had - the plate
was right -- but the two men in the Taurus seemed nervous to see the officer
again.

"When he went by them the second time, they really gave him the old
rubberneck," Colby Police Chief Randall Jones said Friday.

The officer waited for the men to fill up and got behind them when they
pulled out of the service station. The driver illegally passed through the
right-hand southbound lane and got into the left-hand southbound lane to
make a left turn onto I-70, Jones said. Sitton turned on his flashing
lights, and the driver pulled over on the highway on-ramp.

The officer took a driver's license and car-rental agreement from Justin E.
De Busk, 26, of Katy, Texas. A dispatcher told Sitton that the documents
were valid and De Busk wasn't wanted.

But De Busk was shaking when Sitton returned the papers, Jones said, so the
officer asked the driver if he would answer a few more questions. The driver
said he was returning from a ski trip, but the officer didn't see any skiing
equipment.

Sitton asked if he could check the trunk, which De Busk opened from a latch
inside the car. Inside, the officer saw cardboard boxes and a locked duffel
bag that felt as if it held bricks. Sitton suspected the bricks were
packages of marijuana.

The officer called De Busk out of the car and asked him to open the bag, but
De Busk said it belonged to his passenger, Jones said. The officer told De
Busk to stand in front of the police car and then called to the passenger,
Robert Henry Golding, 43.

Golding came out but immediately grabbed something from his waistband, Jones
said. Sitton shoved Golding against the Taurus, and Golding shot himself in
the head, Jones said.

Sitton ran back to his car and shouted into his radio, "Shots fired! Shots
fired! The suspect shot himself in the head!" Then he pulled his pistol on
De Busk and ordered him to the ground until help arrived.

Golding was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Officers searched the car and found cellophane-wrapped bricks of cash in the
duffel bag, six boxes and a trash bag. They also found dozens of Social
Security cards, birth certificates, identification cards and driver's
licenses, some blank and some with Golding's photo, police said.

De Busk was booked into the Thomas County jail, charged with aiding a felon.

His father, Fred De Busk of Huntington Beach, Calif., said Friday that he
doesn't know whether his son knew what he was hauling. He suspects that
Justin De Busk, who stands 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighs about 240 pounds,
was recruited to travel with Golding -- who was about 5 feet 6 and less than
170 pounds -- because of his stout build.

Justin De Busk worked selling spray-on pickup bed liners but frequently made
money dealing in various goods, his father said.

"He was always dabbling with something -- buy something for 10 and sell it
for 20," Fred De Busk said. "But I never suspected anything like this."

Justin De Busk grew up in a large family and was raised as a good Mormon,
his father said.

"We realize that we can train our children, but we can't dictate their
lives," he said.

The cash seized in Kansas will be split among law enforcement agencies that
helped with the investigation and must be used for law-enforcement purposes
that are not funded by their regular budgets, Attorney General Carla Stovall
said in a statement. The $3.7 million seizure breaks the record set by a
$813,786 cash seizure in 1995.