KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A woman reportedly carrying more than five pounds of fentanyl as she traveled through Kansas City, Missouri was charged in federal court Wednesday.
Evelyn Sanchez, 33, was charged with possessing fentanyl with the intent to distribute. Sanchez remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of Missouri.
According to an affidavit, Sanchez was traveling from Los Angeles to New York. Her bus stopped briefly at a Kansas City bus station on Tuesday, Aug. 21. After Kansas City detectives interviewed Sanchez at the bus station, they were suspicious she wasn’t being truthful about her trip to New York, according to the news release. A K-9 alerted to a suitcase under one of the seats near where Sanchez had been sitting on the bus. She eventually said the suitcase belonged to her.
The affidavit says when detectives searched Sanchez’s suitcase they found two bundles wrapped in layers of plastic. It contained a total of 5.3 pounds or 2.4 kilograms of N-phenyl-N-[1-(2-phenylethyl)-4-piperidinyl] propanamide, commonly known as fentanyl.
The DEA St. Louis Division Special Agent in Charge William Callahan said in a news release that the amount was equal to 1.5 million lethal doses of fentanyl.
“Our Interdiction Unit did an excellent job,” Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith said in the news release. “This was a huge amount of fentanyl capable of killing thousands of people. I’m very proud of our detectives and of how our excellent working relationships with our federal partners are keeping dangerous drugs like this off the streets and holding traffickers accountable.”
