SEATTLE – Two men with suspected ties to a violent California street gang are under indictment for allegedly smuggling 14 pounds of cocaine to a Lake Stevens home last month, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
The pair, one from Yakima, the other from south King County, have links to the Nortenos street gang, officials said.
They were arrested Jan. 18 after federal agents secretly monitored what they’d been told would be a major drug deal, according to court papers.
An Uzi semiautomatic rifle and 6.4 kilos of cocaine worth an estimated $100,000 were seized, prosecutors said.
The Nortenos are among the gangs that California officials say are responsible for much of the drug trafficking and many of the homicides in that state.
Snohomish County sheriff’s detective Steve Haley has identified members of the Nortenos gang in Snohomish County.
“We have our own direct ties to California gangs, but we also see some from Eastern Washington,” Haley said.
Federal officials said last month’s arrests point to a disturbing link between organized gangs, drug trafficking and weapons.
“The Nortenos are distributing narcotics throughout the state of Washington, and are using guns to further their criminal activities,” said Kelvin Crenshaw, special agent in charge of the Seattle division of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
A federal grand jury indicted Cody Higginbotham, 20, and Edward Martinez, 21, for allegedly distributing cocaine.
Higginbotham, who lives in south King County, has a prior criminal history, according to court papers, including cases in Yakima and Benton counties.
Martinez, who lives in Yakima, is employed at a family auto repair shop that police believe is associated with drug trafficking in Eastern Washington, according to court papers.
Martinez also has tattoos associated with the Nortenos gang in California and its Yakima derivative, prosecutors alleged.
Both men allegedly told detectives they knew they were bringing drugs to the Lake Stevens home.
Both men were arrested after they were videotaped allegedly carrying six packaged cocaine bricks into the home.
At one point, Martinez picked up one of the bricks of cocaine, smelled it, and said that it was “tight,” according to an affidavit from ATF agent Christopher Taylor. The term “tight” is slang for good-quality cocaine, the agent said in court papers.
“It’s a healthy hunk of coke,” said Pat Slack, commander of the Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force. “I don’t think cocaine will ever go away. It ebbs and flows and ebbs and flows.”
Detectives know that a drug pipeline carrying large amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana passes through Snohomish County.
An indication of just how much of those drugs moves through the area came in February 2005, when Doug Spink, a bankrupt businessman who’d been living in Canada, was captured along U.S. 2 near Monroe. He had more than 300 pounds of cocaine in the back of his vehicle.
Spink later admitted helping to smuggle large amounts of cocaine into Canada on behalf of a drug ring that was trading it for large shipments of high-grade marijuana. Two local lawyers wound up being convicted for assisting the drug traffickers, and a Woodinville man, Robert Kesling, was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison.
Detectives and prosecutors say they are seeing an increase in gang activity in Snohomish County.
In recent months, there has been a spike in robberies, assaults and homicides involving people believed to be connected to gangs.
On Thursday, a Snohomish County jury convicted a man of murder in the 2004 shooting death of Florencio Perez-Silva. The shooter, Leonel Fernando Cortez, has alleged ties to a well-known Central American gang.
Detectives also are investigating possible gang ties in the shooting death of Dennis Riojas, 19, in south Everett last year.
Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.
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