A man was left stunned after accidentally finding bricks of cocaine during his hunt for turtle nests at a Florida beach.
The shocking discovery took place on Friday morning (June 21) on Amelia Island beach in Nassau County, as reported by News4Jax.
The publication shared pictures of bricks of cocaine, which were covered in plastic and had an image of a bald eagle on top.
Authorities revealed that the drugs, which weigh 32 kilograms, have an estimated value of $1 million in brick form, but the street value is more than $4 million.
According to News4JAX, beachgoers said they were astounded when they learned about the bizarre find.
“That’s a tremendous amount of cocaine and what is it doing this far north? So, it was a shock,” Megan Feldman told the outlet.
“We came out looking for shark teeth, but their value is not quite the street value of the other stuff that’s washing up. But we’re still looking for shark teeth,” Paula Johns, a tourist from South Carolina, added.
It’s common for large amounts of packaged drugs to be located on and off the shoreline of South Florida, where smuggling is rife.
US Border Patrol recently shared a video of them seizing 29 kilograms of brick cocaine that was floating in the water off the Florida Keys. The package had the same eagle logo on it.
Samuel Briggs II, the acting chief patrol agent of the U.S. Border Patrol, wrote about the find on X: "Missing a brick? Hit us up! During a beach cleanup, a Good Samaritan in the Florida Keys discovered this kilo of cocaine & notified authorities. The cocaine was seized by the U.S. Border Patrol."
However, it's rare for such a large amount of cocaine to be discovered in Northeast Florida.
“It’s very rare here in Nassau County,” Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said. “Many years ago, there were bales of marijuana that washed up on the beach, but to my knowledge, something like this washing up is certainly a rare event.”
While the planned destination of the drugs remains unclear, law enforcement believes drug smugglers deliberately threw it off a boat.
“More than likely, it was on a boat that law enforcement or Coast Guard was getting close to and they just threw it overboard to get rid of it so they didn’t have possession of it. The sea current just washes it up along the coastline,” he added.
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