DRUG COURIER GETS FIVE YEARS

A Leamington trucker who admitted smuggling drugs across the border on a
regular basis was sentenced Monday to five years in a federal penitentiary.

Charles Stuart Koop, 34, was caught March 22, 2003, with 10 kg of cocaine
and seven kg of marijuana in his truck. He had been hauling a load of
lettuce and melons to Toronto from Florida when he was pulled over at
Canada Customs for secondary inspection. Officers found the cocaine, valued
at more than $1 million, wrapped in one-kg packages in a duffel bag. The
marijuana, with a street value of $700,000, was in one-kg packages in two
black garbage bags.

Koop pleaded guilty to two charges of importing narcotics. The guilty plea
was one of the mitigating factors Supreme Court Justice Dougald McDermid
considered in sentencing.

McDermid accepted the joint submission by Koop's lawyer and the federal
prosecutor that the trucker serve five years, despite other cases in which
cocaine importers were sentenced to penitentiary terms of six to eight
years for their first convictions.

Koop co-operated with police, McDermid noted. Koop told police he thought
he was importing marijuana, not cocaine, when he was arrested.

McDermid said Koop, nonetheless, "knew he was importing a narcotic."
McDermid noted Koop admitted making one or two smuggling trips each month
since 2002, being paid $40 for each pound of marijuana he imported. He had
smuggled drugs across the border before that "from time to time" making
$2,000 per trip until he lost his licence for drunk driving in 1999. Once
he got his licence back, he resumed being a drug courier.

Defence lawyer Ken Marley said Koop has "intellectual and emotional
limitations." He was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder in Grade 8
and dropped out of high school at the age of 16. He is single and lives at
home with his parents. During a recess Monday before the judge returned his
verdict, Koop sobbed in his mother's arms at the back of the courtroom.

"Drug traffickers have exploited the simplistic nature of my client,"
Marley told the judge.

Federal prosecutor Ed Posliff agreed with the sentence, explaining to the
judge that the police would not have known of Koop's history as a drug
courier if not for his co-operation.

Punishing him for that admission "could discourage that kind of
co-operation in the future," Posliff said.