Drones carrying illegal drugs and contraband have been among the creative ideas used by smugglers, and crashes do happen from loss of control or perhaps weight-and-balance problems. An unmanned aerial vehicle with more than six pounds of methamphetamine taped to it crashed near the San Ysidro, California, border crossing to Mexico, The Associated Press reported Wednesday. Tijuana police said they were called to a supermarket parking lot to find the wreckage of a six-propeller drone. A police spokesman said in the AP report that authorities have seen drones used to carry drugs and are looking for the operator.
The AP also reported this week a man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to fly a drone laden with cellphones, tobacco and marijuana into a maximum-security prison in South Carolina in 2014. The drone crashed in the bushes outside a 12-foot razor wire fence at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville. It was the first known attempt to fly a drone with contraband into that state’s prisons, but the idea isn’t new, the AP reported. In 2013, four people in Georgia were accused of using a drone to fly tobacco and cellphones into a state prison there.
