COCAINE DELIVERED TO SECOND SCHOOL

Cafeteria Worker Finds Drug In Box Of Meat

HURLEY -- Fifteen pounds of cocaine found in a ground-meat box at East
Central Upper Elementary School came from the same shipment sent to an
Ellisville school, where 15 pounds of cocaine was found in a ground meat
box last week.

A cafeteria worker at the Hurley school found the cocaine in a box stamped
Lot No. 021 early Monday morning.

"Some of the ground meat was taken out, and in its place was six bricks of
cocaine," Lark Christian, food service director for the Jackson County
School District, said Thursday. "When she was lifting the box to put it on
a shelf, she knew it felt unusual. When she went back to check that box,
sure enough it had been tampered with. It was the same lot number that
Ellisville had."

In the Ellisville case, a delivery driver from Merchants Co., which has
offices in Hattiesburg and Jackson, found the cocaine stacked in a box when
he stopped at Ellisville Elementary School to make a delivery.

Christian said lot numbers are stamped on the side of all boxed food. The
numbers, she said, allow school officials and others to track the
shipment's origin and record other information, such as when the food was
manufactured.

Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Immigration
and Customs Enforcement seized the cocaine shortly after it was found
Monday. Jackson County sheriff's deputies also were at the school.

Neither school officials nor the shipper are suspects in the investigation,
Ed Dickey, DEA's resident agent in charge in Gulfport, said Thursday.

"It came out of Texas," Dickey said. "The meat was not contaminated with
cocaine. I wouldn't want anyone to think that the cocaine was mixed in with
the ground beef."

The state Department of Education notified all school districts in the
state on Friday to segregate shipments bearing the 021 lot number.
Christian said the Jackson County School District still has 96 cases of the
021 shipment, but they are being returned to Merchants Co.

School officials checked the remaining boxes but did not find any more cocaine.

Christian said elementary classes were not interrupted when the cocaine was
found.

"There was never any danger to the children," Christian said. "As soon as
we knew there was a problem, we got the drugs off the campus."