2 charged after 350 pounds of pot are found in car in Summit County

ECHO, Summit County — Two people are facing felony charges after a 350-pound shipment of marijuana was found in their car during a traffic stop, the Utah Highway Patrol said.

On Jan. 28, a trooper stopped Neil Edward Lindsay of Peoria, Ill., for a lane travel violation on I-80, according to a UHP statement released Thursday. During the stop, the trooper noticed that Lindsay, 63, and his passenger, Kathleen Gerard Lindsay, 49, also of Peoria, Ill., were "very nervous and that their stories were not consistent with each other."

A dog with the Summit County sheriff's deputy K-9 unit was called to the scene. The dog indicated several times that there were drugs in the Lindsays' Lincoln Town Car while walking around the outside of the vehicle, the trooper said.

"As officers opened the trunk, they located a large amount of marijuana packaged in wrapping paper and Saran Wrap," the UHP said.

The marijuana bales weighed a total of 351 pounds, according to authorities, who said Neil Lindsay told them he was traveling from Las Vegas to Peoria with the drugs.

The UHP has come under fire recently for allegedly targeting vehicles with out-of-state license plates during drug interdiction efforts.

In December, an attorney for Joseph Bravo of San Francisco argued before 3rd District Judge Bruce Lubeck that his client and other out-of-state drivers were singled out or discriminated against during a 2008 UHP drug interdiction operation on a portion of I-80 in Summit County.

Gerry D'Elia asked Lubeck to dismiss the evidence against Bravo because his client had been subjected to illegal selective enforcement, a violation of Bravo's rights under the First, Fourth, and 14th amendments.

D'Elia contended that the interdiction operation on eastbound I-80 showed troopers stopped 144 vehicles, with 136 of them bearing out-of-state plates.

But Summit County prosecutor Paul Christensen responded that four different troopers testified under oath they had legitimate, traffic-related reasons for pulling vehicles over. The troopers searched for drugs only after they smelled alcohol or marijuana and found marijuana themselves or with the help of drug-sniffing dogs.

Lubeck, in a decision issued days before the Lindsays were arrested, ruled against Bravo. He said he found no evidence that a trooper, faced with a Utah driver and an out-of-state driver committing the same traffic offense, would pull the out-of-state person over and not the Utahn.

The Lindsays have each been charged with possession of a controlled substance and are scheduled to appear Monday before Lubeck.

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