Couple Arrested After Using a Drone to Deliver Drugs

by Jake Anderson

(Antimedia) Entering the pantheon of strange drug delivery services, a California couple was charged Tuesday with using a drone to deliver drugs to customers in Riverside. Benjamin Paul Baldassarre, 39, and Ashley Lauren Carroll, 31, were charged with three counts of possession of controlled substances for sale, child endangerment, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

The arrest was made following the submission of an anonymous tip to the Riverside narcotics department. According to Officer Ryan Railsback, officers began to surveil the property and saw a drone fly out of the backyard. The aerial device flew to a nearby public parking area and dropped a package to customers below.

Officers then issued a search warrant and on Thursday arrested the couple, whose home, Railsback reported, had “used and uncapped hypodermic syringes scattered throughout a bedroom.” Arresting Officers also discovered methamphetamine, LSD-laced candy, and “unpackaged powders believed to contain fentanyl.”

Baldassarre’s 9-year-old daughter was home at the time of the arrest. She was briefly placed in the custody of Riverside County Child Protective Services and then picked up by the child’s mother.

Unorthodox drug delivery methods are not unusual. Over the years, police officers have reported dealers concealing drugs in cans of beans, goat meat, bananas, surfboards, coconuts, pineapples, cocaine bras, wigs and nappies, cannabis garden hoses, heroin thigh bandages, prosthetic limbs, “wheels on luggage made of heroin and cocaine and heroin secreted into book covers.”

Drones certainly add a new high-tech twist to the sad Drug War saga. It’s really not a bad idea if you think about it.