OCEANSIDE, Calif.—Two Oceanside men were arrested Thursday on suspicion of cocaine smuggling after making a predawn emergency landing in a light airplane on state Route 76 in Oceanside.
The pilot of the Piper PA-28 Cherokee safely landed the single-engine aircraft on the eastbound side of the highway near Canyon Drive about 1:40 a.m. Thursday after reporting engine trouble, according to the Oceanside Police Department (OPD).
“From what I understand, there was no traffic, and there were no close calls [with vehicles],” OPD Assistant Chief Taurino Valdovinos told reporters.
When officers arrived, they found the men who had been traveling in the plane—later identified as Gabriel Leon Breit, 21, and 36-year-old Troy Othneil Smith—in the area, uninjured.
As officers took stock of the situation, one of them saw Smith allegedly drop a backpack he was carrying into a patch of brush, “which obviously raised concerns,” Valdovinos said. Police then detained and searched the pair, allegedly finding a small quantity of cocaine on one of them.
At that point, officers retrieved the discarded backpack, discovering about a kilogram of the drug inside it, according to police.
Breit and Smith were then arrested and booked into county jail in Vista on suspicion of illegally transporting a controlled substance and participating in a criminal conspiracy.
Investigators believe that the suspects had flown in the rented airplane, with Breit at the controls, from Phoenix, Valdovinos told news crews during an afternoon briefing.
