A Nigerian woman known as Afolake Awoyemi was arrested at the Kennedy Airport for being ‘pregnant’ with heroine. She had reportedly swallowed several pallets of the drug to smuggle it.
The woman, identified as Afolake Awoyemi, attracted the attention of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspector as soon as she got off the Air France flight No. 6 Wednesday, The flight was coming from Paris.
The woman attracted the attention because she was walking very awkwardly.
When the official noted her strange gait, they asked her to step aside to perform a body search. Afolake Awoyemi became very nervous when she came under observation and started sweating.
Awoyemi, 42, was wearing a loose-fitting dress and when asked what was wrong with her, she said that she was pregnant and was three months along.
These details were given by Homeland Security special agent John Moloney, who filed the complaint against Awoyemi in a Brooklyn Federal Court.
Afolake Awoyemi was selected for a pat-down by the official and after feeling a “bulge” in the woman’s groin area, it became evident that something was wrong. When she was asked to drop her drawers, pellets of heroine started dropping from her groin area. She was then taken to a medical facility at the airport where she also underwent a pregnancy test that came back negative. Later, an X-ray showed more pellets in her intestinal tract.
Officials then asked Afolake to sit on a special commode dubbed by the custom officials as the “Drug Loo”, a special toilet that sanitizes the incriminating evidence. By the end of the day, Afolake had passed around 25 pellets of heroine from her system.
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According to the details provided by a Homeland Security spokesman, Awoyemi was still hospitalized and expected to be brought before a federal magistrate on Monday. According to details, the twenty-five pellets of heroine can have a street-value of about $20,000, but the value can increase depending on the demand.
Experienced drug mules swallow and ingest the substance that they want to smuggle and later pass it out through a very painful process. Some experienced drug mules can swallow up to 200 pellets containing drugs and still go undetected.
Source: Allvoices March 06, 2012.