Woman Discovers 13 Pounds Of Marijuana Hidden For 13 Years in Van [Video]

A New Mexico woman and her family got a big surprise this week when it was discovered that the family van had a hidden secret. Melodie Peil bought the 1990 Chevy at an Alamogordo dealership in the early 2000s, as reported by KRQE News. Since then, she’s used it to shuttle her four kids and two grandkids all over the state, but that’s not all the eight-seater has been shuttling around.

“Lo and behold, we discovered something that didn’t belong there,” said Peil. “It was pretty shocking,” she said.

Stashed away in the passenger side door of the family-friendly van was 13 pounds of pot. Peil said she was having a hard time getting the door to lock and unaware that thousands of dollars worth of marijuana was hidden inside until she asked a family friend, Bryan Reyes, to fix it. As reported by WBIR, when he pried open the door panel, that’s when bricks of decade-old marijuana fell out.

“When I first pulled out the brick, it was a two pound brick, I was like holy cow! So I put it on the chair, and I looked and there was like six more bricks… I thought, ‘This is a lot of marijuana.’ ”

Police say the drugs were likely stashed there by the van’s previous owner, more than 15 years ago.

“It was packaged typically how the drug traffickers package marijuana. You know, they wrap it in foil, they wrapped it in saran wrap real tightly,” said Alamogordo Detective Lieutenant Roger Schoolcraft.

Peil didn’t just drive the van to the grocery store and back. Since they live near Mexico, it’s gone through at least 10 border patrol checkpoints in New Mexico and it passed every time, as reported by WBNS TV-10. Police say it’s likely because the weed was so old and it was packaged so well. Peil said she has learned a valuable lesson, to give the next car she buys a good pat down before driving it off the lot.

The family said they never smelled anything in all the years riding in the van, and neither did border patrol. Police suspect there may be more hidden and are checking the van thoroughly. There’s a good chance even more pot is stashed in the van’s gas tank and floor panels. The family is taking the car to get x-rayed by border patrol Tuesday. The Alamogordo Police Department has disposed of the pot the family found in the van.

As for the previous owner, all the family knows is that he is from Germany. Read about another story reported by the Inquisitr of drug smugglers using a truck disguised as a U.S. government truck, which was caught by border patrol.