PAIR IN JAIL AFTER MIX-UP INVOLVING POT, BODY PARTS

Human Vein, Pulmonary Valve Taken Instead Of 62 Kilograms Of Drugs

A 27-year-old Toronto woman is in a U.S. jail today after a mix-up
involving 62 kilograms of marijuana, a human vein and a pulmonary valve
destined for an emergency transplant at a hospital in Hamilton.

At about 11:30 a.m. on Monday, a woman came to the Buffalo airport to pick
up two cardboard boxes from Delta Airlines that had been shipped from a
company called Accel Graphics, said officials from the Niagara Frontier
Transportation Authority, which operates the Buffalo airport, and the New
York Drug Enforcement Agency.

Unknowingly, the Delta employee handed the woman two boxes from Cryolife,
an Atlanta medical agency, containing human organs and marked with the
words: "Please rush -- human tissue for transplant."

Suspecting there might have been a mix-up, the Delta employee later opened
two similar boxes and, after help from the airport police, found they each
contained about 31 kilograms of marijuana wrapped in plastic and newspapers
and smeared in mustard.

Airport authorities immediately contacted the New York branch of the Drug
Enforcement Agency, and together they began a widespread search for the
missing organs.

Authorities said the woman had used fake indentification to pick up the
boxes and so it would have been nearly impossible to find her before the
organs went bad.

At 8:30 p.m. on Monday, officials got the break they needed as a man called
Delta Airlines several times asking about picking up the Accel Graphics
packages.

Officials said that later that day, at about midnight, a woman approached
the Delta counter in the airport carrying the two boxes filled with the
organs. After the woman made the switch, police officers at the airport and
DEA agents descended on the scene and took the woman into custody. Officers
also apprehended a man who began to run as the officers moved in on the
woman at the counter.

A Delta spokesman declined comment yesterday, citing the ongoing police
investigation, and officials from Cryolife in Atlanta were unavailable for
comment last night.

The organs had been kept on dry ice, however, and a statement from the
police at the airport said the "human organs were expeditiously sent to
their respective medical facilities for transplant."

The boxes consisted of a pulmonary valve bound for transplant at Hamilton
General Hospital, and a saphenous vein destined for a coronary bypass graft
surgery at Buffalo General Hospital.

Tabatha Brackett, 27, of Toronto and Dalvan Robinson, 43, a Jamaican
National residing in Lockport, N.Y., have been charged with federal drug
law violations.

The two were ordered held without bail yesterday on charges of conspiracy
to possess with intent to distribute marijuana. If found guilty, they could
face between 10 and 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $2 million U.S.