BUTTS COUNTY, Ga. — Butts County Sheriff Gary Long says his crime suppression unit responded to the 911 call at one of the county’s many truck stops, leading to the discovery of millions of dollars in marijuana.
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The truck driver told law enforcement he had no clue he was driving around with 1,700 pounds of illegal marijuana.
That marijuana was burned and buried in Butts County late last week. It was not the kind of “up in smoke” originally intended for it when it was shipped from a warehouse in Sacramento, California, Butts County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Josh Pitts, the special operations commander, told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne.
“We got with our district attorney and through Superior Court we got a destruction order,” he said. “We don’t know if it’s possibly laced with stuff, so we wanted to make sure it was destroyed as quickly as possible.”
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Pitts says a 911 call brought the sheriff’s office’s crime suppression unit to a Flying J Truck Stop in Butts County.
That’s where a truck driver who had felt his load shifting had stopped and opened the back door of the trailer he was pulling, revealing a box that had come open, marijuana plastic-wrapped and vacuum packed into one pound bricks.
Pitts says investigators found 20 bricks per box, 16 boxes per pallet, six pallets.
“He was a complete innocent truck driver,” Butts said. “He had no knowledge on what he was hauling.”
Pitts says the sheriff’s office investigation showed the load of weed was bound for Orlando, Florida, but a first delivery had already been made to a warehouse in Atlanta, even more pallets, more boxes from the same original source
Pitts believes it, too, was illegal marijuana
Investigators believe almost 2,900 pounds had been dropped off at the Atlanta warehouse but picked up before the law got there to seize it and is now on the street.
Pitts said as with the truck driver, he is convinced the warehouse operators were innocent and knew nothing about what was in the boxes.
He said he’s not taking a public stance on legalization but he doesn’t think it would stop black market loads like this.
“There’s gonna be problems with the cartels. They’re always gonna try to undercut the person that’s doing it right,” Pitts said.
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