Opinion ID: 201760
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The heroin transaction

Text: 3 On April 21, 2000, customs agents intercepted Eugene Sarruco at the airport in Carolina, Puerto Rico following his arrival on a flight from Curacao. Suspecting that Sarruco was a drug courier, the agents took him to the airport's medical facility where he was arrested after passing five pellets of heroin, each containing slightly less than eight grams of heroin. 4 Sarruco told agents that he had ingested eighty-five heroin pellets 2 and carried them to Puerto Rico on behalf of a drug dealer in Curacao named Andrés Hueck. Upon his arrival in Puerto Rico, Sarruco was under instructions to go to the Hotel San Jorge or the Hotel Iberia. The buyer — whose identity Sarruco did not know — would meet him at the hotel with a bottle of laxatives and pick up the heroin in exchange for $7,000. 5 With Sarruco's cooperation, the agents set up a controlled delivery of the heroin pellets. They had Sarruco call Hueck with a message that he was in Room 209 at the Hotel Iberia. Hueck told Sarruco that someone would be coming, presumably to pick up the heroin. Agent Luis Carmona, who was enlisted to act undercover as Sarruco's stand-in, took the five pellets that Sarruco had expelled to Room 209 of the Hotel Iberia. Agent Carmona put one of the pellets in a drawer in the night stand and put the other four pellets, wrapped in toilet paper, in a dresser drawer. Other agents set up audio and video surveillance of Rooms 209 and 210, as well as surveillance outside the hotel. 6 Sometime after 4 p.m. on April 21, 2000, Gómez drove up to the Hotel Iberia in a green Ford Windstar. He parked the van, leaving two passengers inside, and went into the hotel. A Datsun parked in front of the van, and its driver also went inside the hotel. When the Datsun's driver returned, two agents detained him for questioning until a third agent exited the hotel, yelling that they had the wrong person and that the man in the room was the driver of the green van. One of the passengers in the van jumped into the front seat and drove away. The agents pursued the van to a dead end street, where the van's passengers fled on foot. Upon searching the van, the agents found a loaded gun in plain view between the front seats. They also seized a rental agreement listing Fernando Gómez as an additional renter. 7 In the meantime, Gómez arrived at Room 209 of the hotel, where Agent Carmona was waiting pursuant to the instructions that Hueck had given Sarruco. Carmona, posing as Sarruco, invited Gómez inside and gave him the four pellets wrapped in toilet paper. When Gómez asked Carmona how many he had swallowed, he responded eighty-five. Carmona told Gómez that he was having trouble expelling the remaining pellets. Gómez told him that he needed a laxative and offered to get him one. Gómez then placed the pellets back in the dresser drawer. Carmona went into the bathroom, ostensibly because he was having stomach cramps. Another agent, who had been hiding in the closet, then came out and arrested Gómez.