U.S. CUSTOMS SERVICE ARRESTS CANADIANS IN REDDING; DRUGS FOUND

REDDING, Calif.- Two Canadian citizens were arrested Friday after U.S.
Customs Service agents trailed their small airplane from the Canada-U.S.
border to a small northern California airport and discovered about 400
pounds of marijuana onboard their Piper Aerostar.

The agents tracked the men from the border as they flew south into U.S.
airspace. Once the plane landed outside a hangar in Redding rented to a
Cottonwood man, agents discovered duffel bags full of marijuana on the
twin-engine aircraft.

Agents confiscated from approximately 400 pounds of packaged marijuana in all.

The identities of the men arrested were not immediately released.

Customs agents were alerted to the small airplane by a radar center in
Riverside. The Air Marine Interdiction Coordination Center tracks air
traffic throughout the hemisphere, said Vincent Bond, a Customs Service
public information officer.

A government airplane and helicopter followed the Canadians and stopped on
a taxiway at the Redding Municipal Airport that had been blocked off for
the air show, said Pat Wallner, an air show volunteer who witnessed the
arrests.

"A twin-engine taxied through the taxiway, then another twin, then the
hatch opened on the second plane and three or four guys in black suits with
weapons jumped out," Wallner said.

Bond said the men arrested would be booked at Shasta County Jail and would
be brought before a magistrate in a local court Monday morning. Bond would
not give further details about the arrest Friday and said an investigation
was ongoing.

There was no official estimate on the value of the marijuana, but
Redding-area drug agents recently valued "B.C. bud" from British Columbia
at $5,000 a pound.

That would put the value of a 400-pound load at $2 million.