A drug-sniffing dog led police Friday at a Milan airport to nearly 30 pounds of cocaine stuffed into the leather upholstery of a motorized wheelchair.
The specialized canine unit was being deployed at Malpensa airport to check arriving passengers and their luggage from a flight from the Dominican Republic, since drug couriers had previously used the route, the Financial Guard police said in a statement.
When a dog drew officers’ attention to the traveler, police first checked his luggage, which yielded nothing, then slashed the wheelchair’s upholstery, discovering the cocaine.
Un’unità cinofila della #GDF di #Varese individua un passeggero, che fingendosi disabile sulla sedia a rotelle, trasportava 13 Kg di cocaina.#NoiconVoi pic.twitter.com/EBGrHuJtXu
— Guardia di Finanza (@GDF) September 2, 2022
Police said that when the cocaine was found, the chair user — a Spaniard who had requested airport personnel to help guide the wheelchair — got up, walked without assistance and was taken into custody.
The passenger was brought to a local jail, where judicial authorities upheld his detention pending investigation of the case, the statement said.
Police said the 11 packets of cocaine, weighing a total of 13.35 kilograms (nearly 30 pounds) could have yielded some 27,000 individual doses of the drug and had a street sale value of some 1.4 million euros, or nearly $1.6 million.