LEE'S BIGGEST DRUG-BUST CASE ENDS WITH DEAL

SANFORD - Two men connected to the largest drug bust in Lee County
history have accepted a plea deal and have been released into federal
custody, one of the men's lawyers said Tuesday.

Thomas Beltran Ayala, 32, of Red Springs and Auturo Celis Elizalde,
27, of Raeford were arrested Jan. 25 after about 2,000 pounds of
marijuana - at an estimated value of more than $5 million - was seized
off the back of a tractor-trailer.

Each was charged with trafficking marijuana, maintaining a vehicle to
keep and store controlled substances and possession of drug
paraphernalia. The case, a joint investigation by the U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, the State Bureau of Investigation and the Lee
County Sheriff's Office, was dealt a blow in May when a video of the
seizure appeared on the video-sharing Web site YouTube.

The video was secretly filmed by one of two Sanford police officers.
George Whitaker, a lawyer representing Ayala, filed a motion to
dismiss the charges based on the failure of the prosecution to provide
the video. In preparation for a hearing to discuss that motion,
Whitaker said he subpoenaed the officers, requesting the original,
unedited video and any other footage from the scene.

At that time, he was told the officers, Jody Sellers and Rick Kendall,
no longer worked for the Sanford police department.

Then, less than a week before the hearing, Whitaker said he was
approached with a plea deal.

Under the agreement, Ayala pleaded guilty to possession with intent to
sell and deliver marijuana and, having no previous record, was
sentenced to between four and five months in prison while being
credited for the five months he spent in jail awaiting trial.

The other charges were dismissed. Whitaker said Ayala's co-defendant,
Elizalde, was offered the same deal June 24. Both men accepted and,
because they were not in the county legally, were released into
federal custody.

No offer before video Tuesday, Whitaker downplayed the role the video
had in the case, but admitted that "until then, there had been no
discussions about a plea offer." He said he believed the Lee County
District Attorney's Office and sheriff's department were "genuinely
surprised" by the existence of the video. "They play by the rules,"
Whitaker said. "I don't think they knew about its existence." Whitaker
said a paralegal in his office found the video on the site after
searching for "Lee County" on the Internet.

Upon further inspection, he said his office determined the video
involved his client.

"We just kind of stumbled on it by pure dumb luck," he said. "It was
very unusual, the first time I've had that crop up in a case that I've
handled." Sellars and Kendall, the officers who took the video and
posted it online, were not a part of the investigation and arrived at
the scene on their own, Chief Deputy Randall Butler said in May.

Butler said the county was unaware of the video until it appeared on
YouTube and had not asked for assistance from city police.

Despite the plea, Whitaker said his client maintained that he knew
nothing about the drugs.

The marijuana was discovered packed into boxes of floor tiles loaded
onto a tractor trailer. It had been hauled from Mexico and was tracked
from Texas, investigators said.

Ayala and Elizalde were day laborers hired to unload the truck,
Whitaker said. Charges against the driver of the truck, Javier
Rivera-Lomas, 28, of Atascosa, Texas, were dismissed in April because
investigators couldn't prove that he knew about the drugs, Whitaker
said.