Local police want Albouystown man

Dec 30, 2008 News

Wanted: Reginald Rodrigues

Local police have issued a wanted bulletin for 55-year-old Reginald Rodrigues following a bust in Canada that involved some 76 kilos of cocaine.

According to a police release, Rodrigues’s last known address is Lot 141 Victoria Street, Albouystown.

The release also stated that the wanted man was born on December 17, 1953, is five feet, eleven inches tall, has black hair and brown eyes, and is thin in stature.

Anyone with information about Rodrigues’s whereabouts can contact the police on telephone numbers 225-6411, 225-2700, 226-2917, 226-2870, 225-1111, 225-8196, 911, or at the nearest police station, the release said.

The release said that all information will be treated with strict confidence.

On December 8, some 276 kilos of high-quality cocaine were unearthed at the port of Saint John, New Brunswick, aboard the ship Tropic Canada. Media reports out of Canada stated that the drugs were traced back to Guyana, from where the padded freight containers were shipped out.

The Star reported investigators as saying that the vessel in New Brunswick was confirmed to have been carrying 77 to 79 per cent pure cocaine, which was found inside boxes of hot sauce. They removed all but two kilos of the cocaine and performed a controlled delivery of the container to its original destination in Etobicoke.

It was received by the owner of the company, Mahendrapaul Doodnauth, who unloaded the boxes at a rented storage facility on Rexdale Boulevard in Toronto. As a result Doodnauth of Toronto was charged. Then on December 24, a day after announcing one of the largest drug busts in Ontario’s history, Durham police, working with the Canada Border Services Agency and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), tipped off the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) about the second shipment, which was stopped in St Croix.

The drugs, with an estimated valued of $14.5 million, were also hidden in cardboard dividers in 139 boxes of food seasoning products and destined for Doodnauth’s business in Etobicoke. The product was reportedly shipped from Guyana. In all, the two cocaine busts netted 376 kilos with an estimated street value of Cdn$54.5 million.

According to the Canadian press, the busts are part of a major anti-narcotics initiative dubbed “Project Falcon”, which sought to identify the sources of the criminal network that transported cocaine to street-gang members and drug abusers in the Durham region.

Local police officials stated that they had identified a suspect here but had not yet located him.