Photo via Flickr user tanjila ahmed
A British Columbia grandmother has been sentenced to six and a half years for smuggling ecstasy into the US, the Vancouver Sun reports.
Tina Howe, 58, plead guilty in September for conspiracy to import and distribute the drug. The charges stem from a 2007 incident where she was caught smuggling 155,168 pills of ecstasy concealed in a hidden compartment in the roof of her van.
Howe is now set to serve her 80-month term in a US prison.Howe and her codefendant, Maria Cooke, were busted after the smuggling compartment in the van broke, spilling the pills all over I-5, a highway near Blaine, BC. The incident resulted in a plume of pink and blue dust from cars running over, certainly something a director of Breaking Bad wished they thought of.
Upon arrest Howe claimed the reason for the smuggling was that her son was indebted to BC drug traffickers and that his life was threatened. "He wanted to get out of dealing and turn his life around, which led to people wanting him dead," said Howe's daughter-in-law in a 2015 letter of support filed in court. "Yes, this is a crime, but it was also an act of trying to save her son's life."
Howe did not name any specific trafficking organization but confessed to two previous smuggling trips she had taken on its behalf.
Howe initially cooperated with law enforcement but dropped off the map shortly after being released on bail and disappeared for nearly ten years.
"Her absence resulted in significant cost to the court system, to law enforcement agents in both the United States and Canada," said Assistant US Attorney Siddharth Velamoor in a court memo. "Ms. Howe now claims that she purportedly attempted to turn herself in to law enforcement at various times after she first absconded, there is absolutely no evidence that she actually did so."
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