Suspect doesn’t give up easily

Karen Zekan

Tuesday, May 20, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Metro Police narcotics officers scored a violent but successful coup in the drug war by apprehending a man accused of smuggling a package of crack cocaine into Las Vegas worth about $100,000 on the street.

Banking upon a tip the department received, undercover narcotics and patrol officers were lying in wait Monday for the suspect's dark colored older model Buick Regal with California plates that was expected to exit off Interstate 15 and head west on Charleston Boulevard, said Lt. Dennis Cobb.

About 3:30 p.m., undercover officers spotted a vehicle matching the description traveling west on Charleston near Martin Luther King Boulevard and followed it until officers in a black and white police car could get in position to pull the car over.

The officers got the vehicle to stop in a parking lot near Charleston and Hinson Street. But while they were walking within several feet of the Regal, its driver "got the courage together and took off," Cobb said.

Police said the 29-year-old man sped through the lot, jumped the curb onto Faircenter Parkway and zoomed west to the intersection of Faircenter and Decatur Boulevard, where the Regal's right rear wheel clipped the back end of another vehicle.

With its right rear tire blown and wheel locked, the Regal skidded into the parking lot of the Blueberry Hill restaurant just south of the intersection. Witnesses said the vehicle spun around in front of the restaurant's front door and then smacked into a parked car.

"He took his pound and a half of cocaine and ran," Cobb said. "He's about 6 feet 4, 200 pounds and very fit. Two officers caught up to him, and he drug them a ways before the coke fell out of his hands. He was punching the officers and there was quite a struggle before they got him into cuffs."

The suspect was transported to University Medical Center after complaining of back pain suffered during the crash.

Narcotics officers said the suspect was promising to sell the near-half kilo of crack for $20,000. Crack is usually sold in rocks that weigh about a tenth of a gram, which means the package police said he was carrying could have been broken down into about 5,000 doses. At $20 a piece, the rocks could have brought in $100,000 once they hit the street.

The man is suspected of having gang ties and is believed to have a criminal record in Las Vegas. The vehicle he was driving was registered to an address in Pomona, Calif.

"The reason for the high uniform presence was because we believed he was armed," Cobb said. Police found an array of articles in the car, including a woman's purple bra in the trunk, but no weapon.

Police were sweeping up the broken pieces of crack cocaine dropped in front of Blueberry Hill when Lorraine Barile walked outside the restaurant hoping her 1986 Chrysler Fifth Avenue was still driveable.

"I never park in front of the restaurant, I usually park in the back," she said smiling, although admitting that she nearly choked on her food when the drug bust went down, knowing her car's back end had been crunched.

The collision shattered her right rear taillight, broke off a light near the bumper and dented her Massachusetts license plate.

"I just drove out from Massachusetts a month ago. My car barely made it," she said. "I'm just glad I wasn't in the car or anywhere near it when this guy came in here. That guy deserves what he gets, the way he was fighting those officers. There must have been nine officers wrestling with him. I'm amazed they stayed so calm and didn't shoot him."

The suspect will be charged with two counts of hit and run for damaging Barile's car and the other vehicle in the intersection of Decatur and Faircenter, police said.

He is also facing charges of eluding an officer, resisting arrest and trafficking a controlled substance, which, if convicted, could bring a sentence of 25 years to life in prison.