Every day, there's trucks, trains, and constant movement coming from Formosa Plastics, but residents in Calhoun County weren't expecting what officers uncovered during a railcar inspection one day before Thanksgiving.
The Crossroads HIDTA Task Force, including: Calhoun County Sheriff's Office, Victoria County Sheriff's Office, Port Lavaca PD, and Goliad County Sheriff's Office, was at Formosa checking multiple rail cars when their K9 suddenly locked onto one. These trains run nonstop, but were halted to check out the railcar in question.
Officers noticed something off on the frame of the car. The metal looked tampered with, like someone had worked on it recently. After a closer look, they found a trap door welded into the frame rail itself. Inside was a hidden compartment stuffed with what's suspected to be methamphetamine.
During the inspection, a narcotic detection K9's indicated a positive alert to the presence of narcotic odor emitting from one of the rail cars, a Facebook post from
A second compartment had the same setup, same hiding spot built into the opposite frame rail. By the end of the inspection, task force members had pulled 128 kilos of suspected meth out of the railcar.
Right now, investigators aren't releasing where the shipment was headed or who it was tied to. The case is still open.
But for anyone living in Port Lavaca, Point Comfort, Seadrift, or Victoria, it's unsettling to think something this large was tucked into rail cars rolling straight through Formosa.
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