Grandma, 70, Accused of Dealing Heroin

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - She may have been a sweet old lady, but Bernalillo County Sheriff's Deputies said she was also selling heroin.

Deputies arrested Mary Padilla, 70, Wednesday night, after they said she sold heroin to an undercover informant.

When authorities raided her house on Jupiter Street NW, they found heroin in her purple robe, which was hanging in her bedroom closet.

Detectives said they also found two digital scales.

Neighbor Barbara Goldsmith said that police made a lot of noise, busted down the door and surrounded the house.

"I saw about 5 or 6 vehicles, they all piled out of cars, some had masks, some had guns, semi-automatic weapons," Goldsmith said.

Goldsmith said she was shocked by the arrest.

"Mary is a wonderful neighbor, she looks after everybody, she helps people when they need it. There's no way Mary could use or be a drug dealer, it's impossible" Goldsmith said.

Padilla has been charged with trafficking a controlled substance. She made her first appearance in court Thursday afternoon. She told detectives the drugs were her son's.

Champion Mountain Biker Jailed in Huge Pot Bust

WTEN- Missy Giove, a retired world champion downhill mountain biker, is facing charges of conspiracy with intent to distribute hundreds of pounds of marijuana.

She and two others are in custody, following an investigation began in Illinois and ended in the Saratoga County town of Wilton.

Altogether, the Drug Enforcement Agency seized more than $1,000,000 in cash and close to 400 pounds of marijuana. The drugs alone have a street value of about $250,000.

Before her retirement in 2003, Giove, nicknamed "The Missile", was one of the most successful downhill mountain bikers in the world. Now, she faces an uphill battle against federal prosecutors and drug conspiracy charges.

Court documents detail how police tracked down Giove, who is from Virginia, in Wilton earlier this week.

Giove landed at the Albany International Airport Tuesday morning, days after another woman was arrested during a traffic stop in Illinois. That woman was driving a truck and trailer with more than 200 pounds of marijuana on its way to the Albany area.

Law enforcement picked the delivery up from there.

Back at the airport, police watched Giove get into a taxi, go to a nearby Hilton hotel and pick up the truck and trailer from a police informant. They say the trailer belonged to Giove.

Giove then drove to Wilton, where she dropped off the informant at a book store.

According to police, Giove then went across the street to a Hannaford parking lot to meet with Eric Canori, a Wilton resident, and the two drove to his house. Authorities add that some of the contents from the trailer were unloaded there and then Giove drove off.

Police finally stopped her in Saratoga Lake, found marijuana in the trailer and she was arrested

A police search of Canori's house yielded the $1,000,000 in cash and more than 150 pounds of marijuana.

Submarines Ferry Colombian Blow

MEXICO CITY -- When anti-narcotics agents first heard that drug cartels were building an armada of submarines to transport cocaine, they thought it was a joke.

Now U.S. law enforcement officials say that more than a third of the cocaine smuggled into the United States from Colombia travels in submersibles.

An experimental oddity just two years ago, these strange semi-submarines are the cutting edge of drug trafficking today. They ferry hundreds of tons of cocaine for powerful Mexican cartels that are taking over the Pacific Ocean route for most northbound shipments, according to the Colombian navy.

The sub-builders are even trying to develop a remote-controlled model, officials say.

"That means no crew. That means just cocaine, or whatever, inside the boat," said Michael Braun, a former chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The subs are powered by ordinary diesel engines and built of simple fiberglass in clandestine shipyards in the Colombian jungle. U.S. officials expect 70 or more to be launched this year with a potential cargo capacity of 380 tons of cocaine, worth billions of dollars in the United States.

"This is definitely the next generation of smuggling conveyance," said Joseph Ruddy, an assistant U.S. attorney in Tampa who prosecutes narco-mariners.

The submersibles are equipped with technologies that make them difficult to intercept, even though U.S. forces use state-of-the-art submarine warfare strategies against them. Authorities say most slip through their net.

"You try finding a floating log in the middle of the Pacific," one DEA agent said.

U.S. officials and their Colombian counterparts have detected evidence of more than 115 submersible voyages since 2006. They have apprehended the crews of more than 22 submersibles at sea since 2007. Six crews have been arrested this year. The Colombian navy has intercepted or discovered 33 subs since 1993.

U.S. officials fear that the rogue vessels could be used by terrorists intent on reaching the United States with deadly cargos.

The vessels do not fully submerge but skim the sea surface. They move quickly at night, then drift like sleeping whales during the day. Under cover of darkness, they slither out of Colombia's shallow rivers and 10 days later rendezvous offshore along the Central American coast, usually near Guatemala, where cocaine is offloaded and the subs are sunk.