Sujena Soumyanath / oregonlive.com (TNS)
Two people were arrested and about 276,000 fentanyl tablets were seized during a traffic stop on I-5 in Jackson County on Monday, Oregon State Police said.
A police officer stopped a tractor-trailer around 8 a.m. for a traffic violation, officials said. While searching the cab, the officer found two 5-gallon buckets full of blue pills suspected to contain fentanyl.
Daniel Pena Gragoso, 42, and Josue Itzel Gomez, 28, both of Mexico, were taken into custody and booked into the Jackson County Jail, police said.
Gragoso and Gomez were no longer listed in Jackson County jail records Wednesday.
Gomez – listed in court records under the last name Gomez Parra – was approved to return with his “co-defendant” to his residence in Sonora, Mexico, on Tuesday, according to Jackson County District Court records.
Gomez’s next court date is September 11. According to the court’s travel authorization, he is charged with illegally manufacturing a counterfeit Schedule II controlled substance.
No court records relating to Gragoso were recorded in the state’s electronic court records database.
There have been numerous drug seizures on I-5 in Oregon in recent years. Just last week, Portland police seized an estimated $2 million worth of fentanyl, meth and heroin during a traffic stop on the highway.
Earlier this year, more than 200 pounds of methamphetamine were seized during a traffic stop on I-5. And in 2022, officers seized 80 pounds of cocaine from a car traveling on the highway.
Fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opioid, has exacerbated a three-decade-long opioid crisis. Since 2020, overdose deaths from illegally manufactured fentanyl have “increased significantly” across the state, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
In 2022, fentanyl was the most common illicit drug caused by overdose, accounting for 65.5% of overdose deaths in the state, the agency reported.
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