COCAINE NOT MEANT FOR SCHOOL

Trafficker Just Made A Mistake, Agents Believe

PASCAGOULA - The 15 pounds of cocaine found in a ground-meat box in
the freezer of East Central Upper Elementary School earlier this week
was likely a drug-trafficker's mistake and wasn't intended for that
school, federal agents said Friday.

The contents of the box are at the Drug Enforcement Administration's
crime lab in Dallas, where they will be analyzed and searched for
fingerprints.

There are no new leads in the investigation, said Ed Dickey, DEA's
resident agent in charge in Gulfport. He said testing the cocaine is
routine and there is no doubt it is cocaine. A similar incident
occurred at a school in Ellisville last week.

He said the drug wasn't destined for the schools. It was in with a
shipment of ground beef delivered from Texas to Merchants Co., which
"handles everything from butterbeans to ground beef," Dickey said.
"It's a supply company for grocery stores, hospitals and schools.

"Someone didn't take something off or out of the shipment," Dickey
said. "It could just as easily have wound up at a restaurant."

When asked how unusual it was to find drugs hidden like that among
meat deliveries, he said it was somewhat unusual, but that drug
traffickers are "only limited by their imaginations."