A young Guyanese woman who was traveling back to the United States with a one-year-old baby girl, is now facing drug trafficking charges.
The woman has been identified in US Court documents as Odessa Ladonna Edmondson. She is believed to be from the Linden community.
The Court documents revealed that Edmondson arrived in the US at the JFK Airport on September 22 and was pulled aside for questioning. She revealed to the US Customs and Border agents that she was returning to the US after a one-month vacation in Guyana with her young daughter.
Her suitcases were checked and did not reveal any illegal item, although agents questioned why it did not have more items for her and the baby.
But according to the Court documents, the woman was noticed acting in a nervous manner and started to sweat.
She was questioned about various inconsistencies in her statements to the officers and eventually admitted that she had ingested cocaine pellets.
The young mother asked to use the washroom and excreted 49 cocaine filled pellets. She was immediately placed under arrest and told of the charges that will be filed against her. At that stage, the woman asked to use the restroom again. During that second run to the restroom, she excreted 26 additional cocaine filled pellets.
She told the agents that she had swallowed 200 cocaine filled pellets and was expected to be paid US$6000 to ferry the cocaine into the United States in her stomach.
She eventually passed out more than 194 cocaine filled pellets weighing just over 3 pounds.
The matter is still under investigation even as charges have been filed against her. Agents in Guyana and the US believe that the bust may be linked to other recent cocaine drug busts from Guyana using the same method.