CLEVELAND COUNTY, N.C. — A traffic stop in Cleveland County led to the arrest of two suspects accused of trafficking methamphetamine and cocaine worth more than $1 million, the sheriff’s office said.
Deputies with the Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office said they found approximately 44 pounds of meth and 2.2 pound of cocaine inside a car they stopped on Highway 74 near Kings Mountain.
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During the search, deputies said they found the nearly 50 pounds of drugs that they estimated to have a street value of more than a million dollars.
Malra Idania Carrizales-Rivera, of Columbia, South Carolina, and Juan Carlos Covarrubias, of Charlotte, were arrested and charged with drug trafficking, deputies said.
According to authorities, a traffic stop led deputies to call a K-9 team for a search of the suspects’ vehicle.
Deputies said they suspected the drugs’ final destination to be the streets of Cleveland County.
“The Sheriff’s Office will continue to make drug investigations a high priority,” Sheriff Alan Norman said. “Statistics have shown for years that drug use leads to other crimes, in particular breaking and entering and larcenies, where users have to steal to fund their habit.
“The violence associated with drug dealing is also a huge concern of mine, and those dealers who possess guns during drug transactions will be a very high priority.”
Both suspects face two counts of trafficking meth and two counts of trafficking cocaine, according to deputies.
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