Motorist busted at checkpoint with four pounds of weed

On Thursday, a salesman found out exactly why they call it a checkpoint at mile four on the Western Highway when police there checked the trunk of his rental car and discovered four one-pound parcels of marijuana. According to police, at around one-thirty on Thursday afternoon they stopped and searched a green Ford Escort occupied by Colin John Searle and Ruan Nunez. The twenty-three year old residents of San Pedro appeared in court today where Searle wasted no time to take the rap. He pleaded guilty to Drug Trafficking and his attorney, Kevin Arthurs, in a mitigation plea told Magistrate Sharon Frazer that Searle had no intention to distribute the weed. Arthurs said that Searle has never been in trouble with the law. Arthurs asked Frazer to impose a non custodial sentence. Magistrate Frazer decided to do just that by using the proviso that although the crime of drug trafficking has a mandatory jail term of three years, in the case of first time offenders, a fine can be imposed. Searle was released after being fined ten thousand dollars payable by March thirty first, 2010, in default, three years behind bars. The charge of drug trafficking was withdrawn against Nunez.